European Commission Digital Decade Short Country Report: Croatia 2026

The European Commission has published the Annex to its ‘State of the Digital Decade 2026’ Communication presenting the Digital Decade Short Country Report for Croatia.

• Main announcement/action: The Commission’s annex reports that Croatia set 13 national targets (out of 14 possible) for the Digital Decade, with 77% alignment to EU 2030 targets; 54% of trajectory points are on track, 88% of the eight 2025 Commission recommendations were addressed through new measures, and by end-2026, 39% of measures will end. The annex also reports public funding details: EUR 1.5 billion (21% of Croatia’s Recovery and Resilience Plan) for digital, EUR 0.9 billion (10% of cohesion policy funds) for digital, and EUR 106 million identified as the public budget associated with roadmap measures (representing 17% of the roadmap’s total public budget). Croatia is noted as participating in EDIC consortia and IPCEI-CIS, and as a participating state in EuroHPC JU and Chips JU.
• Background and concrete details: The report provides connectivity and adoption metrics including VHCN coverage 78.9%, FTTP 75.4%, basic 5G 94.2%; business/digital adoption metrics such as SMEs basic digital intensity 56%, cloud adoption 40.7%, AI uptake 11.8%; and flags persistent gaps in SME digitalisation, ICT specialist pipeline, data analytics uptake and cybersecurity. It lists specific programme involvement (Alliance for Language Technologies, CitiVERSE EDIC, EUROPEUM EDIC, IMPACTS EDIC) and recommends targeted actions on AI uptake, connectivity (including 3.4-3.8 GHz 5G deployment), digital public services, and green+digital data infrastructures.