Digitalization and Democracy in the Western Balkans Digital Economy Participation Transformation Policies Innovation   Infrastructure Literacy Ethics Data Technologies Resilience Regio- nal Cooperation Disinformation Security Hybrid Platforms Virtual

This publication provides an the EU has also led to a new dynamic in the enlarge- overview of the recommendations developed at the ment process: the European Council made the deci- conference as well as the input papers that guided sion to open accession negotiations with Ukraine the discussions, written by civil society experts and and Moldova and with Bosnia and Herzegovina, academic researchers. [...] Currently, the divergence the Digital Agenda for the Western Balkans (WB) gap is widening from year to year, as the Western with the aim to “support the transition of the region Balkans fall behind in digital literacy, digital infra- into a digital economy and bring the benefits of the structure, and labor market regulations.  digital transformation, such as faster economic growth, more jobs, and. [...] December 2023, the European Commission passed the Cyber Resilience Act that sets cybersecurity Two prominent recent examples of cyber incidents benchmarks for hardware and software products are the attacks on the government of the Republic and holds manufacturers accountable for ensuring of Albania and the attack on the IT infrastructure of these benchmarks throughout a product’s lifecy- the gover. [...] As shown in the table below, the share of house- holds with a fixed broadband network is almost the The overview shows that all WB countries lag be- same in the Western Balkans (77%) as in the EU hind the EU, both in terms of basic and advanced (78%). [...] It is clearly embedded in Aiming to enhance the digital transformation of the the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan.17 whole European region, the EU launched the Digi- The EU’s target for digital skills in Europe’s Digital tal Agenda for the WB in 2018.