Country highlights – European Year of Digital Citizenship Education 2025

Within the framework of the European Year of Digital Citizenship Education 2025, 169 activities have been planned and carried out in 18 member states so far.

In Armenia, the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports during the months of February and March 2025 carried out teacher training activities on competences for democratic culture. Approximately 2000 teachers from various schools benefited from this training initiative. Furthermore, a self-paced module on “Media Studies” helped train 6000 teachers from various schools in the country to develop critical thinking skills, media literacy skills and improve their skills to navigate the digital environment.

In Austria, every month, polis – Austrian Centre for Citizenship Education, supports teacher education and training by creating specific sections on the polis website for teachers to dive deep into one of the domains of digital citizenship education and receive teaching ideas, suggestions and information on related materials they could use in the classrooms. In terms of awareness-raising activities, polis on behalf of the Ministry of Education in cooperation with many actors in the field of citizenship education is currently running the campaign “Austrian Citizenship Days 2025” from 23 April until 9 May 2025 which includes a focus on Digital Citizenship Education. Furthermore, the German version of the DCE Handbook and the European Year 2025 were presented to the members of the Austrian No Hate Speech Committee.

In France, the edition 2025 of the Festival Hauts-de-Seine Digital Games was organised in the context of the European Year 2025 on 4-5 April 2025 in Paris. A publication “Passport to Digital Citizenship” was distributed to the young visitors introducing the Council of Europe’s concept of digital citizenship education and the key actors active in the digital world that were present at the Festival.

Regarding Ireland and the UK, Mr. Villano Qiriazi, Head of the Council of Europe’s Education Department, addressed the participants of the Five Nations Network Annual Conference that took place in Edinburgh on 1-2 March. Teachers, academics and policy makers from Ireland and the UK attended the conference which focused on highlighting the contribution of citizenship education to preparing young people for digital citizenship.