Joint Statement of the Second Meeting of the European Union – Singapore Digital Partnership Council

The second meeting of the European Union - Singapore Digital Partnership Council took place in Brussels on 1 December 2025, co-chaired by the 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.

The European Union (EU) and Singapore reaffirmed the importance of their partnership, which is built on common interests and a joint commitment to preserving the rules-based multilateral order. They affirmed the increasing relevance of the Digital Partnership and its deliverables as an indispensable tool in boosting competitiveness, innovation, and resilience in emerging technologies.

The EU and Singapore took stock of the progress since the inaugural meeting of the EU-Singapore Digital Partnership Council in Brussels on 1 February 2023 and announced a refresh of priority areas and deliverables. This refresh of priorities reflects the swift advancement of technologies, and the collective work the EU and Singapore can do to leverage their application and benefits, while mitigating risks and harms.

The EU and Singapore reaffirmed their commitment to leverage the Digital Partnership to demonstrate leadership in shaping digital rules and standards and facilitating interoperability in a trusted and secure manner. The Digital Partnership contributes to enhancing mutual economic security through building resilience in critical technologies. The collaboration also strengthens capacity and excellence in research and innovation, thereby boosting competitiveness. They also agreed to deepen the Digital Partnership and involve stakeholders in its implementation to foster industry cooperation and reiterated that their digital cooperation is of strategic importance and contributes to enhanced ASEAN-EU partnership as reflected in the ASEAN-EU Joint Ministerial Statement on Connectivity.

They welcomed the signing of the EU-Singapore Digital Trade Agreement on 7 May 2025. This marks a milestone in deepening cooperation in the digital domain by establishing legally binding rules that build consumer trust, recognise that individuals have a right to privacy and the protection of personal data, ensure legal certainty for businesses, as well as remove and prevent unjustified barriers to digital trade. The Digital Trade Agreement builds on cooperation in the digital domain under the EU-Singapore Digital Partnership, as well as the EU-Singapore Digital Trade Principles of February 2023. The EU and Singapore are working towards a swift ratification of the Digital Trade Agreement.

The EU-Singapore Digital Partnership Council welcomed the achievements and future collaboration in the seven areas under the Digital Partnership as follows.

The EU and Singapore:

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• Agreed that the signing of the Administrative Arrangement on Collaboration on the Safety of AI in November 2024 marked an important step in strengthening cooperation in responsible innovation, development, and use of safe, trustworthy and human-centric AI.

• Reaffirmed the willingness to implement the Administrative Arrangement by deepening cooperation on AI safety and governance, and sharing respective approaches to boost AI skills and mobility opportunities for their workforce.

• Intend to continue exploring exchanges on the evaluation of AI language models, including among initiatives like the EU’s Alliance for Language Technologies European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (ALT-EDIC) and Singapore’s Southeast Asian Languages in One Network (SEA-LION) family of Large Language Models.

Online Safety and Tackling Scams

• Intend to address risks stemming from online platforms, including online harms. They expressed appreciation for the regulatory exchanges that took place on their respective frameworks applied to online safety. This allowed both sides to explore commonalities, to learn from their respective implementation experiences in areas of shared concern and to discuss risk-based approaches and civil society engagement as some of the key building blocks for online safety regulation.

• Intend to further bilateral exchanges focusing on the protection and empowerment of minors online. Such exchanges could include the potential of age verification tools, such as the secure and privacy-preserving EU age verification solution.

• Explore exchanging views on scam trends as well as measures to protect users of digital services (including online platforms) from financial scams.

Verifiable Credentials and Trust Services

• Intend to continue collaboration and explore practical cross-border interoperable use cases for verifiable credentials leveraging existing digital identity systems as well as exchange information on digital signatures.

Cybersecurity

• Intend to explore exchanges on their framework for a cyber resilient market, protection of critical infrastructure, cyber crisis management and the involvement of the private sector. The EU also commended the role of Singapore in the organisation of joint capacity-building efforts to the benefit of ASEAN.

• Acknowledged that ongoing bilateral collaboration in cybersecurity paves the way for multilateral cooperation, particularly through the Global Cybersecurity Labelling Initiative which aims to agree on a common understanding for cybersecurity of Internet of Things devices. Both sides envisage further cooperation and coordination to ensure the success of this Initiative.

• Intend to continue cooperation on multilateral cyber discussions, including on the upcoming UN permanent mechanism, the “Global Mechanism on developments in the field of ICTs in the context of international security and advancing responsible State behaviour in the use of ICTs” (“UN Global Mechanism on ICTs Security”).

• Recognise the importance of cybersecurity evaluation and certification schemes in building trust and confidence in digital products and services. Singapore and the EU will explore potential synergies between the EU Common Criteria-based Cybersecurity Certification Scheme (EUCC) and the Singapore Common Criteria Scheme (SCCS), in order to streamline certification procedures.

Cross-Border Data Flows with Trust

• Acknowledged that the collaboration between the European Commission and ASEAN, under Singapore’s Chairmanship of the ASEAN Digital Ministers Meeting, brought about the adoption of a Joint Guide building on commonalities between the EU Standard Contractual Clauses and ASEAN Model Contractual Clauses. This assists companies present in both jurisdictions with their compliance efforts under both sets of clauses when transferring personal data across jurisdictions.

• Intend to support the expansion of this work to include other regions, in particular Latin America.

• Intend to explore cooperation in the area of governance and sharing of data, for example regarding frameworks and standards to facilitate trusted data-sharing ecosystems and cross-border data sharing.

Semiconductors

• Express interest in collaborative research (e.g. on advanced packaging) and leveraging relevant opportunities including the Horizon Europe framework.

• Welcomed the recent announcements of cross-border investments in the semiconductor ecosystem – and the SEMICON Southeast Asia 2025 event that took place in Singapore on “Bridging Continents, Building Futures: Europe meets South-East Asia” building links among the European, Singaporean and other Asian semiconductor industry. They confirmed that they intend to leverage mutual expertise in supply chain management, as well as support talent and research exchanges.

Quantum

• Intend to exchange views on policies and strategies on quantum technologies as a new area of cooperation, to enhance technological development, economic competitiveness, and supply chain resilience.

• Intend to explore collaboration in research & development, standards and interoperability, and to deepen ecosystem engagements in the domains of quantum technologies, focusing on quantum communication.

The EU and Singapore look forward to convening the third Digital Partnership Council Meeting. They will continue to advance the discussions across the refreshed priority areas to deepen the Digital Partnership.