The development of digital technology is radically changing the world around us, as such, it has become everyday in all aspects of human life. The paper analyzes digitalization from the aspect of global value chains. The aim of this paper is to explain the importance and impact of digital technology on global value chains. More precisely, to show whether the relations of countries with different degrees of digitalization have changed, ie whether digitalization has had positive or negative effects for them. The technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution contribute to the upgrading of operations in global value chains and help subsidiaries in functional upgrading, ie involvement in more complex knowledge-based manufacturing operations. Global value chains have been created by expanding the activities of multinational companies, ie by fragmenting the production process, so the production process takes place in a number of countries. This means that the importance of trade in intermediate products that pass through several countries from the beginning of production to finalization is growing. The impact of digitalisation will be much more significant in the years ahead. Most EU countries are characterized by backward participation, which means that they import more intermediate products that they use in production for export, ie that they are among the countries where the final stages of production take place.