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they didn’t have adequate time to create innovative, interactive content but relied on
simple video conferencing. This change to digital teaching has been difficult due to the
fact that many (VET) educators do not have the digital skills and capacity to restructure
their lessons. There is no legal framework for non-formal and informal learning ap-
proaches in Germany (unlike in Denmark, Finland and Portugal for example), which
makes it difficult to create a coherent and coordinated teaching structure. Time and
support for improved digital literacy is an unmet need for continuous learning pro-
grams to succeed.

2.3 STATE-OF-THE-ART FINDINGS FROM ROMANIA

2.3.1 STATE-OF-THE-ART OF NATIONAL DIGITALIZATION AND DIGITAL
COMPETENCE LEVEL IN THE POPULATION

According to Eurostat Romania is the country with the lowest degree in digital literacy
in Europe, as only 56 % of the young people have minimum or medium digital compe-
tences. The vulnerable ones come from disadvantaged categories of people who
didn’t have any access to digital learning or training of competences.

THE NATIONAL DIGITAL STRATEGY
The Covid 19 pandemics influenced the awareness of these significant deficiencies re-
garding people's’ digital abilities and use of technology in education. As a result, Ro-
mania has adopted a 6 year strategy (2021 - 2027) for the digitalization of education
with special focus on forming digital competences of its population that are relevant
for this digital transformation of education and also on setting up a digital educational
ecosystem.

The main target is to equip up to 82 % of the population in the age group 20-34 with
enough digital competences in order to get them ready for emerging professions. This ,
however, leaves out an important and vulnerable part of Romania’s population that is
still struggling with professional reconversion after the age of 40.

Unfortunately, the current situation shows that the vulnerable categories of adults still
don’t benefit from training of digital competences through national programmes and
only at a local level some NGO offer training programmes with the help of European
funding. These, as well, are difficult to organise at a national level since Romania does
not have a comprehensible statistics about the real number of the people who are not
digital literate.