EU Code Week 2024 kicks off to encourage young people to acquire coding and digital skills

Today the EU Code Week's 12th edition will kick off with a hybrid launch event.

This event connects the Code Week community from all over Europe and showcase the ongoing efforts to promote digital skills and careers in technology with sessions on inspiring stories of women in tech and digital education.

This year's EU Code Week takes place from 14 to 27 October. Anyone can take part by organising or joining coding activities. Materials in 29 languages have been made available to support activity organisers, such as teachers, and an interactive mapshows all the activities that are being organised by area.

By bringing coding activities to the classrooms, EU Code Week seeks to encourage young people to take up coding and pursue a career in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.

Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President for Europe Fit for the Digital Age said:

"By learning to code, young Europeans can unlock their full potential and become the innovators, entrepreneurs, and leaders of tomorrow. This year's EU Code Week is a fantastic opportunity for them to get started, and I encourage everyone to join in and discover the exciting world of coding and digital skills."

EU Code Week is part of a wide range of initiatives that the European Commission supports to close the skills gap for digital talent and promote basic digital skills in the population. The Report on the state of the Digital Decade 2024shows that significant work remains to be done to reach the 2030 targets on digital skills. At the current rate by 2030 Europe will only have 59.8% of those aged 16-74 with basic digital skills, missing the target of 80% and the number of ICT specialists will only reach 12 million, well below the target of 20 million.

More information on the EU Code Week.

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