The European Commission, through a series of initiatives and actions, supports its Member States in their efforts to reduce the number of people in the workforce that lack, at least, basic digital skills. In 2021, the European Court of Auditors presented the Review No 02/2021: EU actions to address low digital skills” analysing how the EU can achieve its objectives.
According to this review, in 2019, a third of adults in the EU working or looking for a job — more than 75 million people — did not have at least basic digital skills or had not used the internet at all in the last three months. This rate was higher for people with low educational attainment, the elderly and the unemployed. The report, which is not the result of an audit, but an overview of the information that is publicly available and does not include an assessment of the measures taken by the Commission in this area, presents recent developments in basic digital skills in the workforce aged between 25 and 64, which have taken place in the context of EU action in this field since 2010, and in particular over the last five years.
The report shows that the EU has recognised the importance of basic digital skills for all citizens, an issue included in the Europe 2020 strategy. Since 2010, the EU has launched several initiatives covering digital skills, often as part of broader measures, and since 2016 there has been a stronger focus on digital or basic skills, although actions often still concern other skills, skill levels or target groups. The role of the EU in strengthening digital skills is to support national actions through guidelines and recommendations, to support cooperation networks and to fund actions to address this issue. However, the primary responsibility for education systems and vocational training lies with the EU Member States.
According to the indicators used by the Commission, little progress has been made in recent years among EU Member States on basic digital skills. While the best performing EU Member States are among the world’s leading countries — where comparable data are available, the worst performing Member States are not in a better position than those that rank low on the scale of non-EU countries. For this latter group of Member States, the situation gradually deteriorated over the period 2015-2018, which shows that the digital divide is not only a problem between population groups within a Member State, but also between high and low performing countries in this area.
The review was prepared by Audit Department II (Investments for Cohesion, Growth and Social Inclusion).
Here you can find the Press Release
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