Digital competencies in EU countries – adaptability to the “the future of work” paradigm

Purpose: The main objective of this paper is to identify and compare the level of digital competences at the country level in the European Union (EU). Design/methodology/approach: The data connected with digital competences of inhabitants were adopted from the Eurostat database. There were 19 selected variables, which refer to the last available official data for 2023. The grouping of the EU countries into clusters was provided by the K-Means method, and the ranking of EU countries by digital competence development was done using the TOPSIS method. ANOVA test was used to determine whether there are statistically significant differences in the averages of digital competency variables across the clusters, thereby validating the effectiveness of the clustering method. Findings: The EU countries which can be treated as benchmarks for others in terms of digital competences are the Netherlands and the Nordic countries. At the same time, a very low level of digital competences is noticeable in Bulgaria and Romania. Research limitations/implications: Beside the EU cross-country comparisons in terms of digital competences, another important issue is the change in the level of these competences over the years. This issue was not addressed due to the limited volume of the article, but it may be a direction for future research. Practical implications: The analysis allowed for the identification of benchmark EU countries which can serve as samples for good practices analysis. Social implications: Analyzing benchmarks can provide identification of the reasons (social and economic policy solutions) for the high level of digital competences in these countries. Originality/value: There is a gap in scientific research concerning analyses of the level of digital competences at the macroeconomic level and cross-country comparisons.