In Four EU Countries, Over 80% of People Have Basic Digital Skills

A target with four countries already past it and a long tail behind

The European Union aims for 80% of its adult population to have at least basic digital skills by 2030. In 2025 the figure was 60.4%.

Unlike most EU targets, this one already has countries on the far side of it. The Netherlands records 83.6%, Ireland 82.8%, Denmark 81.5% and Finland 81.0%. Four Member States have met a 2030 objective five years early.

The distance behind them is the story.

What the measure actually requires

The indicator is stricter than the phrase basic digital skills suggests. It assesses five separate areas — information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, safety, and problem solving — and counts a person only if they reach at least basic level in all five.

Someone confident with email and online banking but unable to handle privacy settings does not count. That construction is why 60.4% sits below any count of people who simply go online: everyone it counts has used the internet, and using it is not the same as clearing all five bars.

The tail

Romania records 31.8%, the lowest in the Union, and Bulgaria 38.3%. Both are below two people in five.

Above them, Slovenia at 46.5% is the surprise; Latvia at 48.4% is not, sitting almost exactly where its GDP per head would place it. Slovenia's GDP per head is 90 on an index where the EU stands at one hundred, sixteenth of the twenty-seven, and it sits third from bottom on digital skills — below Poland, Greece and Lithuania, all of which are poorer on that measure. Eleven Member States are poorer than Slovenia on that index, and nine of them are more skilled; only Bulgaria and Romania are less.

The two rankings correspond closely across the Union: the wealthier Member States are mostly the more skilled ones, in the one year measured here. What the correspondence does not cover is how far a single country can sit from it, and Slovenia is the case in point: nine places lower on digital skills than on GDP per head.

The size of the spread

The distance between the Netherlands at 83.6% and Romania at 31.8% is 51.8 percentage points, a range this category matches on only one other indicator, online purchasing.

For a Union with a single digital market and a common 2030 objective, a spread of that size means the target is not one target. For the four countries already past it, the remaining question is what comes after 80%. For Romania, reaching 80% by 2030 would mean the share growing to about two and a half times its present level.