Methodology to project Digital Decade trajectories towards 2030

The Digital Decade Policy Programme sets the path for the Digital Decade, and aims at strengthening the EU’s digital economy for businesses and citizens to digitally transform European societies and economies. It has set specific targets by 2030 on four areas: digital skills, digital infrastructures, digital businesses and digitalisation of public services. and proposes a monitoring system that will measure the progress of the European Union and its Member States towards the achievement of those targets. In this context, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission (EC) in collaboration with the EC's Directorate General Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT), launched a study aimed at supporting the monitoring of the Digital Decade key performance indicators towards their 2030 targets. This report presents the methodology developed to estimate the EU trajectories towards the Digital Decade targets. It explains the general framework and the empirical specification applied for estimating these trajectories for the targets with data availability at the moment of writing this report. It proposes the estimation of a baseline trajectory by extrapolating historical series, and a benchmark Digital Decade trajectory displaying the ideal scenario to achieve the targets. The report also details the concrete application of the framework to each target, outlining particular adjustments and presenting the data used.