Following the very successful first iteration of an EU-Japan Digital Week in April 2025, the 2nd EU-Japan Digital Week was held in Tokyo from 24 March until 30 March 2026. As last year, the EU-Japan Digital Week was supported by the Horizon Europe co-ordination and support action INPACE, in which Eurescom is a partner, and responsible for the partnership with Japan in particular.
This second edition of the digital week included again by invitation only policy workshop with the title “Securing the Digital Horizon: EU-Japan Cooperation on Emerging Disruptive Technologies and Critical Infrastructure” with high level representation both from the Japanese and European side (https://inpacehub.eu/eu-japan-digital-week-2026/). Keynote remarks were provided by Jean-Eric Paquet, Ambassador of the European Union to Japan and Keitaro Ohno, Member, House of Representatives, Japan.
Against a backdrop of mounting geopolitical tensions, rapidly deteriorating security environment in Europe and Asia and the recent outright war against Iran, it is not surprising at all that the focus of geopolitical discussions shifted to resilience, critical, dependable and trusted connectivity, crisis response, space-based infrastructures, national security and defence. A range of dual use emerging and disruptive technologies were considered, including artificial intelligence (AI), quantum technologies and space technologies. Prominent policy experts, industry representatives, and researchers from Japan and Europe discussed avenues for joint Research and Development (R&D) initiatives, investments, technology governance, and trusted connectivity frameworks, including practical collaboration mechanisms under the EU-Japan Digital Partnership to ensure trusted supply chains, among others. Building on well-established and successful EU-Japan European Space Agency and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA cooperation regarding Earth observation and other scientific space missions, aspects of space technologies were discussed including information sharing, space situational awareness alerts and incident reporting to enhance collective security. Strategies for aligning standards, resilience measures, and innovation ecosystems were looked at in a rapidly changing geopolitical and technological landscape, with the objective to jointly promote a rules-based, human-centric digital order in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. Main messages from the discussions included the vital importance of interoperable standards and governance.
Acknowledgment and Disclaimer:
The activities reported here were funded by the EC INPACE project (Grant Agreement number 101135568). The views expressed herein are solely by the author.
Group picture after the Policy Workshop on Tuesday 24 March 2026.