European Union and Singapore discuss reinforcing digital cooperation through Digital Partnership Council

This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission.

Today, the EU and Singapore held their second Digital Partnership Council meeting in Brussels, reiterating their intention to cooperate across a range of digital areas from Artificial Intelligence (AI) to cybersecurity and beyond. Both sides reaffirmed their intention to enhance mutual competitiveness, foster innovation and shape digital rules and standards.

Today’s Digital Partnership Council, co-chaired by Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, Henna Virkkunen and Singapore’s Minister for Digital Development and Information, Josephine Teo, welcomed the numerous active engagements and achievements of the Partnership, and aligned the priority areas for cooperation with the current landscape.

The European Commission and Singapore notably discussed areas for future collaboration in:

• Artificial Intelligence: reaffirming the importance of the administrative arrangement on collaboration in the safety of AI, and discussing future exchanges on AI language models, such as the EU’s Alliance for Language Technologies European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (ALT-EDIC) and Singapore’s Sea-Lion.
• Online safety and tackling scams: ensuring that we jointly address risks stemming from online platforms, continue exchanging views on how best to protect consumers, and focusing on the protection and empowerment of minors online, including the potential of age verification tools.
• Trust services: exploring cross-border interoperable use cases for verifiable credentials, such as existing digital identity systems.
• Cybersecurity: continuing cooperation to make sure both sides have a cyber-resilient market, stressing the importance of bilateral and multilateral action, and recognising the value of constantly evaluating cybersecurity risks.
• Data: welcoming the role of mutual cooperation in boosting data flows and looking at how to expand it, and exploring possible cooperation in data spaces.
• Semiconductors and quantum: expressing interest in collaborative research, such as through the Horizon Research framework, and welcoming cross-border investments in the semiconductor ecosystem.

They also welcomed the Digital Trade Agreement signed in May 2025 between the EU and Singapore. This agreement sets up binding rules that build consumer trust, ensure legal certainty for businesses, as well as remove and prevent unjustified barriers to digital trade.

Overall, the EU-Singapore Digital Partnership Council will play an important role in enhancing mutual economic security, strengthening capacity and excellence in research and innovation, and building resilience in critical technologies, such as semiconductors.

Background

On 1 February 2023, the EU-Singapore Digital Partnership was signed to strengthen the EU’s partnerships in Asia. The Partnership was announced jointly by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and then Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong, at the EU-ASEAN summit in December 2022.

Both the EU and Singapore have set out strategies that aim to empower citizens and businesses to fully enjoy the opportunities that technologies offer.

So far, this partnership has prioritised AI, digital identities, semiconductors, digital transformation and skills, further bridging the digital divide. Both partners have also worked together on areas such as semiconductors, trusted data flows, digital trust, protection of minors, standards and digital trade.

Today’s updated priorities in this partnership with Singapore follows the European Commission’s International Digital Strategy in May this year, which put an emphasis on deepening its partnerships and focusing on priority areas of cooperation, including emerging technologies, cybersecurity and online platforms.