Digital Transition

Guidance Lab > Digital Transition

Digital transition is a core pillar of the European Union’s long-term development strategy and one of the two mutually reinforcing dimensions of the twin green and digital transition. 

Through the EU Digital Strategy and the Digital Decade framework, the European Commission has defined a comprehensive vision to strengthen competitiveness, resilience and social cohesion by 2030, encompassing digital infrastructure, skills, business digitalisation, public services and data governance.

Within this framework, digitalisation is conceived as a horizontal enabler of productivity growth, innovation, environmental sustainability and institutional modernisation, while also posing risks of territorial fragmentation.

The Next Generation EU initiative operationalises this strategy by introducing binding digital expenditure targets, dedicated monitoring tools and a digital tracking system, elevating digitalisation to a core performance dimension of EU spending.

Within EU Cohesion Policy, digitalisation has become an increasingly prominent investment priority over the last decade. Substantial resources—especially through the ERDF—have supported firm-level digital adoption, broadband infrastructure in remote and rural areas, and the digitalisation of public services, with dedicated thematic objectives in both the 2014–2020 and 2021–2027 programming periods.

However, digital transition policies are not automatically associated to positive outcomes. Local differences in economic structure, human capital endowment, institutional quality and connectivity can lead to  heterogeneous digital trajectories.

To avoid uneven impacts, a comprehensive policy response should be characterized by implementation coordination across governance levels, and by complementary investments covering digital infrastructure, soft skills, organisational change and administrative capacity within firms and public administrations.