The DESI measures the performance of 28 EU member states in a number of areas, including connectivity, digital skills, integration of digital technology, and digital public services.
Croatia scored 0.42 on the DESI 2016, ranking 24th out of the 28 EU member states. It moved up one spot from 2015 when it scored 0.37. The EU's average score for 2016 was 0.52, up from 0.50 the year before.
In Croatia, 19% of small and medium-sized businesses sell online - above the EU average of 16% - and 8.9% sell online across borders (against 7.5% at EU level).
However, Croatia still lags behind on Internet use as 66% of Croats go online regularly, compared to an EU average of 76%. Only 2.8% of the fixed Internet subscriptions are to high-speed connections (30% in the EU), the lowest in the EU. High-speed Internet (at least 30 Mbps) is available to only 52% of homes, and one of the possible reasons for this might be affordability, since the standalone fixed broadband subscription in Croatia costs as much as 2.5% of the average gross income, more than the overall EU average of 1.3%.
"Croatia is part of the catching up cluster of countries because, although it still performs worse than the EU as a whole, it has developed fast over the last year and got closer to the EU average," the report says.
Overall, the EU has made progress in digital development, albeit uneven. The difference between the digitally most developed and least developed member state is 37 percentage points, compared with 36 percentage points in 2014.
The best performing countries are Denmark, Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands, followed by Luxembourg, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Estonia and Austria.
The top three EU countries are also leading on the global stage and are followed by South Korea, Japan and the United States.
Among the EU countries, the greatest progress has been made by Slovakia and Slovenia.