Mapping consumer empowerment in the age of AI

As we navigate the midpoint of the European Commission’s “Digital Decade”, the release of the 2025 Consumer Digital Empowerment Index (CDEI) provides an empirical baseline for assessing the socio-technical integration of European citizens. 

Developed within the framework of the Consumer Empowerment Project (CEP), this index serves as a multidimensional diagnostic tool, measuring consumer agency across ten European jurisdictions.

The 2025 data suggests that European digital development is no longer a linear progression of infrastructure, but a heterogeneous landscape shaped by consumer behaviour and institutional trust.

The Mediterranean shift in Europe’s digital adoption

One of the most significant findings of this year’s study is the emergence of a “Mediterranean Digital Pivot”. Historically, the discourse on European innovation has been dominated by a North-South divide. However, the 2025 Index reveals a substantive paradigm shift.

Italy (54.6) has demonstrated a superior level of digital assimilation compared to its core continental peers, outperforming both France (47.1) and Germany (45.6). This gap suggests Italian consumers are moving beyond digital access towards functional integration, where digital services in banking, communication, and e-commerce are core components of daily life management. 

In contrast, Germany’s position as the sole nation scoring systematically below the EU average (45.6) may indicate an “adoption inertia” that could hinder its broader economic competitiveness if left unaddressed.

Europe’s AI paradox: high awareness, low capability

The 2025 edition introduces the AI PULSE (Perception, Usage, Life Impact, Sentiment, Empowerment) indicator, a composite metric designed to quantify the readiness of the European consumer for the generative AI era.

The data highlights a profound cognitive dissonance within the Single Market.

While GenAI awareness has reached a near-ubiquitous 92%, and adoption stands at 60%, a striking “competency deficit” persists, with only 40% of respondents reporting a high level of self-efficacy in utilizing these tools.

Italy performs slightly better than the EU average with an AI PULSE score of 47.1, marginally ahead of Germany (46.8) and substantially ahead of France (43.7).

This suggests that while the “technological push” is increasingly offering AI tools to consumers, the “educational pull” (the development of the skills necessary to harness these tools for actual empowerment) remains insufficient.

Our analysis reveals a stark divergence between “high-engagement” and “low-engagement” digital sectors.

Community & Communication (83.7) and Money & Investment (82.7) represent the vanguard of digital empowerment. In these sectors, the utility is clear, and the user interface has reached a level of maturity that minimizes friction, although trust in service providers remains limited among some users.

Conversely, sectors such as Education & Training, Home & Domestic Energy, and Mobility & Tourism consistently record lower scores. These underperforming sectors are characterized by significant information asymmetry. In these domains, empowerment depends less on technical capability than on institutional transparency and data security.

The findings of the 2025 CDEI underscore a fundamental truth: digital empowerment is a socio-cultural construct that requires a robust literacy-infrastructure nexus.

As we advocate for a more competitive and equitable European digital ecosystem, our policy focus must prioritize the consumer’s right to understand, control, and benefit from the digital tools that increasingly define our social and economic reality.

The 2025 Index is a roadmap for the interventions required to ensure that the European consumer remains a sovereign actor in an increasingly automated world.