News about Digital Skills

The High-Level Expert Group on the Impact of the Digital Transformation on EU Labour Markets, created by the European Commission in May 2018, issued its final report with recommendations on 8 April 2019.

On 20 and 21 March 2019, Code Week ambassadors and coordinators from ministries of education came to Brussels to prepare the next edition of EU Code Week. They met European Commissioner Mariya Gabriel, exchanged experience on what worked well in 2018, brainstormed on new ideas and identified challenges for the upcoming months. In 2019, EU Code Week will take place from 5 to 20 October.

Over the past two years, the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition has grown into a large multi-stakeholder partnership with more than 400 members and 23 National Skills Coalitions. To enable better information exchange, networking and interaction, stakeholders and National Coalitions suggested setting up a one-stop-shop for digital skills in the form of a web portal.

EU Code Week is a grassroots initiative supported by the European Commission as part of the Digital Single Market Strategy to increase digital skills and competences among young people. One of the targets in the European Digital Education plan is for example to involve 50% of schools in the initiative by 2020.

The Commission has received monthly reports from Google, Facebook and Twitter addressing actions taken during January 2019 towards implementation of the commitments on electoral integrity.

The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union reached a provisional political agreement on the first-ever Digital Europe programme, part of the EU's long-term budget presented by the Commission.

Young people from all over Europe are showing a growing appetite for coding activities, robotics and computational thinking, as the record participation in EU Code Week clearly reveals. The number of people taking part has grown from 10,000 to 2.7 million in just six years. The 2019 edition will take place from 5 to 20 October.

The European Commission published the first reports submitted by signatories of the Code of Practice against disinformation signed in October 2018. While the Commission welcomes the progress made, it also calls on signatories to intensify their efforts in the run up to the 2019 EU elections.

Online platforms have submitted a first implementation report setting out the state of play of the measures taken by each of them to comply with their commitments under the Code of Practice on Disinformation. The Commission welcomes these actions but calls on online platforms to intensify their efforts in the run up to the 2019 European elections.

The STARTS programme launches local initiatives in schools to have artists and IT experts jointly teach digital skills.