LAUSR

I M A G E B Y S Z A S Z -F A B I A N I L K A E R I K A of the digital economy. These systems need to be fundamentally transformed and modernized. In January 2018, a Digital Education Action Plan, which set out a number of priorities, was published by the EU. The most relevant priority for our initiative is “Developing relevant digital competences and skills for the digital transformation,” and the Plan suggests one way to implement this is to “Bring coding classes to all schools in Europe.” This is important, but more is needed, as we will explain in this article. ACM Europe and Informatics Europe. ACM Europe (europe.acm.org) was established in 2008, and Informatics Europe (www.informatics-europe. org) in 2006. From the early days, the two organizations have collaborated on educational matters; through this liaison, they are seen to project to the wider community a single message about aspects of informatics education. In 2013, the two groups set up and funded a Committee on European Computing Education (CECE) to undertake a study that would capture the state of informatics education across the administrative units of Europe (generally, these units are the countries, but within Germany, for instance, there are 14 different administrative units with autonomy regarding education). The CECE study paralleled the highly influential U.S. study Running on Empty that had drawn attention to the state of computer science education in the U.S. The CECE study gathered data from 55 administrative units (countries, nations, and regions) of Europe (plus Israel) with autonomous educational systems through the use of questionnaires and a wide network of reliable contacts and official sources. The report on that work was published in 2017. The three themes of informatics, digital literacy, and teacher training provided the framework for the study. Informatics was