Romania’s young population has among weakest digital skills among EU states

In Romania, only 53.3% of young people between the ages of 16 and 24 have at least basic digital skills, the second lowest level in the European Union, ahead of Bulgaria (52.8%), according to Eurostat. The European average is 74.6%.

Romania continues to lag behind most European countries in terms of the digital literacy of its young generation.

At the opposite end is Denmark, where 92.1% of young people have basic digital skills, followed by the Czech Republic (91.7%) and Malta (91.5%). Finland, Croatia, and the Netherlands also exceed the 88% threshold. Eurostat data also highlighted gender differences. At the European Union level, 75.9% of young women aged 16 to 24 have at least basic digital skills, compared to 73.3% of young men.

Higher shares of young women with at least basic digital skills in the EU – but the opposite in Romania. In 22 of the 27 Member States, girls exceed boys in this indicator. However, Romania is among the only five countries where the situation is the opposite. Thus, 55.1% of boys have basic digital skills, compared to only 51.1% of girls, a gap of four percentage points in favor of young people.

A larger difference is recorded only in Malta, where the boys' advantage is 4.6 percentage points.

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