Summary

• The European Commission says Europe has made progress on connectivity, public services, digital skills, and technology adoption, although delivery remains uneven across member states.
• Cloud, AI, chips, cybersecurity, advanced networks, and specialist skills remain weak points in Europe’s digital sovereignty agenda.
• The report links digital performance to future funding, national roadmaps, industrial policy, and the next phase of EU competitiveness planning.

The European Commission’s digital policy directorate has warned that Europe’s 2030 technology ambitions now depend on whether member states can turn digital policy into infrastructure, skills, public services, and business capability.

The Commission’s 2026 State of the Digital Decade report says the EU has made progress on secure and sustainable digital infrastructure, online public services, digital skills, and business adoption of advanced technologies. The same report also shows that Europe’s digital economy remains exposed to structural weaknesses in cloud, chips, cybersecurity, specialist skills, and high capacity networks.

The Digital Decade programme tracks Europe’s progress against 2030 targets covering connectivity, skills, business digitalisation, and public services. It has become more than a monitoring exercise. The findings now feed into national reform plans, EU funding decisions, industrial policy, and the bloc’s wider attempt to reduce strategic dependence on technology providers and infrastructure outside Europe.

Member states have committed to 1,934 measures worth €289.3 billion through national Digital Decade roadmaps, including €205.9 billion from public budgets. The Commission says 64% of its 2025 country specific recommendations have been addressed, although several indicators show how far the EU still has to go before those plans become durable economic capacity.

Basic 5G coverage has reached 96.8% of EU households, but fibre and other very high capacity networks need faster deployment. The EU accounts for only 9% of the global semiconductor market, against a 2030 target of 20%. In business adoption, 46.7% of EU enterprises use cloud computing, 39.9% use data analytics, and almost 20% deploy AI. AI adoption rose by 48% in 2025, but smaller companies still face barriers around skills, cost, data access, and infrastructure.

The skills figures show the same split between progress and undercapacity. More than 60% of Europeans now have at least basic digital skills, while ICT specialists make up only 5% of employment, half the 2030 target. Women account for less than 20% of ICT specialists, leaving Europe with a workforce gap that cannot be solved by infrastructure investment alone.

The report also sets out a more assertive policy agenda around cloud, AI, chips, networks, quantum, business identity, digital wallets, and regulatory simplification. Those areas are tied to the next EU Multiannual Financial Framework, national partnership plans, and the future Competitiveness Fund, which means the Digital Decade process is becoming part of Europe’s investment machinery.

Europe’s digital weaknesses are not confined to one layer of technology. A company cannot make serious use of AI without trusted data, secure cloud capacity, skilled staff, and confidence around regulation. Public services cannot digitise effectively if procurement remains slow, identity systems stay fragmented, and local institutions lack technical capacity. Semiconductor gaps affect industrial resilience, while network gaps affect everything from rural business services to advanced manufacturing.

The Commission also links digital spending to economic output, arguing that each €1 invested in digital measures under the Recovery and Resilience Facility produces €1.50 in EU economic output and €2 globally by the end of the Digital Decade. Almost half of the public funding in national roadmaps is expected to phase out by the end of 2026, however, which leaves continuity as one of the programme’s more practical constraints.

Europe has built a large digital policy architecture over the past decade. The next phase will be judged less by targets and more by whether businesses can adopt advanced tools, public services can modernise without failure, and infrastructure investments can support cloud, AI, cybersecurity, chips, and networks at industrial scale.