In 2025, fewer than one in two internet users in Europe used a public administration website to obtain information. The European Union has set the goal that all its essential public services be accessible online by 2030. This gap between ambition and actual usage reveals a tension that institutional timelines tend to ignore: digitizing an administrative process does not make it accessible to those who need it most.
The essentials
- In 2025, 47% of internet users in the EU consulted a public website online to obtain information, compared to more than 70% in Finland, Denmark, and Sweden, according to Eurostat. Overall, 71.9% used a public authority website or application for at least one purpose.
- The European objective of essential services fully digitized by 2030 treats digital skills, infrastructure, and public services as separate objectives, with a distinct goal of 80% of people having basic digital skills and the maintenance of offline accessibility.
- Data on usage inequalities suggest that certain populations, particularly older people, those with low educational attainment, or low incomes, encounter greater obstacles to using online public services.
- Several Nordic countries demonstrate that effective digitization requires parallel investment in digital mediation and the maintenance of non-digital alternatives.
- The success of Europe’s digital transformation by 2030 will be measured by the quality of usage, not simply by the availability of platforms.
A 25-point gap that makes a fracture visible
Forty-seven percent: that is the share of European internet users who consulted a public administration website in 2025 to obtain information, according to Eurostat. This figure covers all 27 member states. But behind this average lie very different realities.
In Finland, Denmark, and Sweden, the proportion exceeds 70%. In several Central and Eastern European countries, it remains well below 40%. The gap between Nordic countries and the European average approaches 25 points. Twenty-five points for a single procedure as basic as consulting a public website for information: not filling out a form, not accessing a benefit, just getting informed.
This figure deserves careful reading. Internet users already represent a self-selected population: those who have internet access and use it. In 2025, 4% of people aged 16 to 74 in the EU had not used the internet in the previous 12 months, according to Eurostat. The Eurostat measure describes usage among recent internet users and does not directly measure access for the entire population.
The silent assumption behind the 2030 agenda
The European Union has inscribed in its program for a digital decade the objective that all essential public services be fully accessible online by 2030. The ambition is legitimate. Digitization reduces transaction costs, extends access hours, eliminates mandatory trips for millions of people. For a farmer in Poland or a self-employed person in Romania, being able to renew a permit without traveling to the local government office represents a concrete gain.
But the 2030 agenda sets a goal of online availability while providing for separate objectives regarding skills and the maintenance of offline access. This reasoning works well for populations already comfortable with digital interfaces. It breaks down for others.
The eGovernment Benchmark report published by the European Commission measures each year the maturity of digital public services according to four criteria: user-centeredness, transparency, cross-border mobility, and key digital services. Scores progress regularly. But these criteria measure what administrations offer, not what citizens are actually able to accomplish with these tools. A smartphone-accessible form poorly designed, written in dense administrative jargon, requiring account creation and possession of a digitized document: it checks all the boxes of the indicator and remains unusable for a large portion of the population.
Who gets left behind on the digital path
Data on digital usage inequalities in Europe draws a consistent profile. Age and level of educational attainment are statistically associated with gaps in the use of online public services.
People aged 65-74 used public websites to obtain information at a rate of 37%, compared to 50% for those aged 25-64 according to Eurostat. Yet these are the people who, statistically, interact with government most frequently, for pensions, healthcare, social assistance. Digitization progressing fastest affects precisely the procedures they need most.
People with low educational attainment and low incomes form the second at-risk group. They often combine lower familiarity with digital interfaces and lower ability to manage errors, form rejections, blocked procedures, forgotten passwords. For someone who is skilled with tools, a technical glitch is a ten-minute annoyance. For someone who is not skilled, it is an abandoned process, an unexercised right.
This mechanism is not unique to Europe. But it takes on particular significance here because digitization of public services in several countries accompanies simultaneous reduction in physical points of contact. Offices closed, office hours eliminated, phone numbers redirected to chatbots: the disappearance of the human counter is not caused by digitization, but it often occurs at the same time. And it hits precisely those whom digitization has not yet reached. A parallel could be drawn with other forms of state withdrawal: where services become scarce, needs do not disappear.
The distinctive practices of Nordic countries
The 25-point gap between Nordic countries and the European average is rarely explained by a single factor. Available data suggest that several investment areas contribute to explaining these gaps: infrastructure, service design, and mediation.
Infrastructure first. Denmark, Finland, and Sweden invested massively in broadband connectivity for rural areas and in equipment. Coverage alone is not sufficient, but its absence makes everything else impossible. The European Union moreover made universal connectivity a prerequisite for its digital agenda, with results still highly unequal depending on the region.
Service design next. Nordic public digital services are designed with users, not for them. Finland developed a systematic approach to user testing before any deployment. Denmark built its public portal by iterating with representative groups of citizens, including older people and people with disabilities. The result is simpler interfaces, less fragmented procedures, forms written in plain language.
Mediation finally. Nordic countries have maintained human support systems—libraries equipped with resources, digital mediation agents, helplines for administrative procedures—while developing online services. This coexistence is not a sign of backwardness: it is a deliberate conception of accessibility. It recognizes that digital competence is built, that it takes time, and that in the meantime rights must remain accessible.
Initiatives seeking their scale
Several member states have launched programs that address this blind spot in digitization. They remain too often fragmented, underfunded, or confined to local pilot experiments.
France developed digital advisors, agents trained in guiding online procedures, deployed in shared spaces, media libraries, and public service centers. Portugal bet on Citizen Shops, one-stop service counters combining physical presence and digital access. Estonia, often cited as a model of advanced digitization, has maintained assistance offices for complex procedures, while digitalizing virtually all of its services.
These approaches share the same logic: digitization as an additional layer of access, not as a replacement for human contact. It is consistent with usage data. The maintenance of human alternatives alongside the development of online services corresponds to practices in countries with the highest usage rates.
The European Commission acknowledges in its own work that digital inclusion is a condition for success of the digital decade. But the indicators of the 2030 program primarily measure service availability, not their actual accessibility. It is a measurement choice that shapes priorities: if we only measure what we put online, we optimize for putting things online.
Digital skill as a new threshold for access to rights
There is in the digitization of public services a tension that the European agenda has not yet resolved. It formulates simply: the online availability of a service does not guarantee that all populations can actually use it, particularly when it accompanies the disappearance of non-digital alternatives. This skill—knowing how to navigate an administrative website, create a secure account, scan a document, understand a form—is not universally distributed. It is strongly correlated with education, income, and age.
It is a logic similar to what accessibility policies have spent decades correcting for people with physical disabilities. Ramps, subtitles, simplified language versions: these adaptations were imposed not because their cost was zero, but because access to public space and to fundamental rights is a democratic requirement. The same logic applies to digital accessibility.
The European digital accessibility framework exists. The 2016 European directive imposes accessibility standards on public websites. But its application remains uneven, and it does not cover user skills, only the technical characteristics of services. Technical accessibility of a page and actual comprehensibility for a citizen uncomfortable with administration are two different things. The question of who truly finances access to these digital rights is moreover crossing several European public policies right now.
Measuring what really matters by 2030
The 2030 objective is not unrealistic on the technical side. Most member states have the capacity to put their essential services online within this timeframe. The difficult part is elsewhere.
It lies in questions that current indicators struggle to capture: abandonment rates for online procedures, prior withdrawals, and the impact of the closure of alternative channels on the exercise of rights.
These questions are not rhetorical. They point toward concrete public policy choices. The first is to maintain non-digital alternatives for high-stakes procedures—pensions, social benefits, residence permits—at least for populations identified as at risk of exclusion. The second is to invest in digital mediation at scale, not as a pilot experiment but as permanent infrastructure. The third is to evolve the indicators of the digital decade program to include measures of actual usage, not just availability.
Several voices within the European Commission advocate for this evolution of indicators. The eGovernment Benchmark already incorporates a “user-centered” dimension. Making it fully operational would require actually surveying non-users, which implies heavier surveys, representative samples from populations distant from digital tools, and political will to measure failures as much as successes.
Europe has managed large-scale transitions when it has equipped itself with the right measurement tools and the right incentives. The question posed by 2025 Eurostat data is ultimately simple: do we want to measure how many services are online, or how many citizens actually access them? The answer to that question will shape a very different policy for the five years to come.
Sources
- Eurostat, Digitalisation in Europe 2026, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/interactive-publications/digitalisation-2026
- European Commission, eGovernment Benchmark 2026, available on the DG CONNECT website (no guaranteed URL)
- European Commission, Programme for a Digital Decade 2030, objectives and indicators, ec.europa.eu/digital-strategy
- European Directive 2016/2102 on the accessibility of websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies
