MANILA — The European Union is looking to transform the Philippines into a “digital hub” in Southeast Asia, one of the EU’s leaders said on Monday.

This will include the establishment of fast and reliable connectivity with submarine cables, cybersecurity training, and deployment and development of 5G, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said during her meeting with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in Malacañang.

“We will launch this year, the digital economy package for the Philippines,” she said, without giving an exact amount.

“We are also working on a possible extension on a submarine cable that we plan to build between the European via the Arctic to Japan, and this cable could go all the way down to Southeast Asia,” she said.

“We believe that it could go via the Philippines that would give you a strategic position on an infrastructure that could be instrumental both for your prosperity and national security,” she said.

In the first half of 2023, the Philippines ranked 83rd out of 142 countries in terms of internet speed, Marcos Jr. said in his second State of the Nation Address.

“Digitalization is the call of today, not the call of the future but of the present,” he said in his annual report to Congress last week.

“It is here. It is needed and it is needed today,” he said.

The administration is pushing to digitalize vital government services in the next few years, Marcos Jr. said, noting that digital retail payments in the Philippines rose to 42 percent last year.

The Philippine President described his meeting with the European leader as “successful and productive” as they managed to agree on other fronts, including the grant of €60 million in aid for green economy initiatives, and a plan to help modernize the Southeast Asian nation’s coastguard and other assets in the West Philippine Sea.

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Von der Leyen is the first European Commission President to visit the Philippines. Her trip to the country comes months after she met Marcos in Belgium on the sidelines of the European Union and Association of Southeast Asian Nations Commemorative Summit in Brussels last year.

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