Digitalisation and regional inequality

Digitalisation has been widely presented, especially in Central and Eastern European countries, as an additional engine for regional convergence and an accelerator of the catching-up process. Although the pace and depth of this process have varied greatly over the past decade, limiting the possibility of a thorough impact evaluation, recent data combined with nationally representative surveys allow for a better assessment of its promises. This study examines regional variations in digital inequalities in Romania, focusing on how disparities evolve across the three levels of the digital divide (access, skills/usage, and outcomes). The results indicate that, while digitalisation has been hailed as a catching-up engine for the peripheral regions, this appears to be the case mostly for the first-level of the digital divide, namely infrastructure and access. When second- and third-level digital inequalities are taken into consideration, the initial rifts reappear, and digitalisation functions as a new divider and not as a uniformiser. The paper argues for a unitary policy approach in which digitalisation moves beyond a predominantly technological vision and is complemented by strong efforts in fields such as education, skills formation, training, and support actions that enable the effective use and exploitation of digital resources at competitive levels, including in peripheral regions.