1. Good afternoon to all of you. Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for inviting me to join you at the launch of EuroCham's Education and Academic Committee.
2. Firstly, it's important for us to acknowledge the work that we have done together over many years.
3. The relationship between Singapore and the EU is deep and broad. We cooperate in diverse fields like security, economics, education, and culture. Specifically for education, we have a deep and long relationship. We used to have the French-Singapore Institute and the German-Singapore Institute that are now a part of the heritage of Nanyang Polytechnic. We also have a lot of collaborations across diverse fields of research, academic exchange, and so forth.
4. We have benefited in the past from the scholarships given out by various EU countries including France and Germany. And many of my counterparts have studied in European countries, including myself. Now the question is, where do we go from here?
5. Today, we live in a fractious and fragmented world where people talk about big power dynamics and geopolitics. But I think each and every one of us, as individuals and as corporates, have responsibilities and agency to not go down the path of a more fragmented, fractious world. Each of us can do something about this.
6. And one of the best ways for us to avoid having a fractious and fragmented world is to build links, to build bridges between our people and between organisations, corporations, and so on. And it is our responsibility to try to uphold the global order that is based on rules that we can all benefit from.
7. In that context, I'm very happy to see the setting up of this committee. This committee is about planting the seeds for a better tomorrow, to plant the seeds so our children have better cross-cultural understanding, to build the bonds and the trust of future cooperation.
8. And now, I'd like to make a few suggestions. And hopefully the next time I meet you, we will be able to reflect on the progress that we have made together.
9. First, with the help of this committee, we can strengthen the links between the schools in Singapore and the schools in Europe. I have a dream where every one of my schools will have a partner school in another part of the world. We have set it up with many schools from Australia, New Zealand, China, US and I hope that my schools will be able to partner many European schools, not just the well-known ones in Western Europe, but also in Central Europe and Eastern Europe.
10. I really hope that our students can start young. And nowadays, they don't even have to physically visit one another but with the use of technology, they can communicate with and understand one another. I have seen schools conducting virtual tours for one another. We learned this during COVID. And we shouldn't lose such good practices. So, this is one idea that I hope to achieve with the support of the committee.
11. The second idea is that I would really like to see greater research collaboration between our universities in diverse areas, be it in the digital sphere, sustainability, new materials and so forth. And I think between Europe and Singapore, we have a chance to transcend the big power politics, whereby we can come together and build something that brings people together, instead of divide.
12. To this end, for all the corporations here with us today, we would also like to invite you to have a presence in our universities, polytechnics, and Institute of Technical Education (ITE). Some of the leading European companies have already partnered our Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) and set up corporate labs.
13. For many of the enterprises here, it may be difficult for you to do your R&D without having the full suite of R&D facilities, but there're always opportunities for you to work with our polytechnics and universities, whereby we work with you on new ideas for your products, productisation, and the whole suite of business services. So I'd like to see more collaborations between the European companies in Singapore with our Institutes of Higher Learning. I have many good examples of European companies who have joined us, not just in Nanyang Polytechnic but Temasek Polytechnic and elsewhere.
14. Last but not least, I hope that there will be greater collaboration between our educators. I hope that you will be able to open the doors of your companies to allow my educators to see your company's operations, to be inspired by the things that you do. Why is this important? Because when my educators are able to better understand what your companies do, they can bring back the message and inspire our children. And I know that some of you, an increasing number of you, have opened your doors to allow our students to see the kinds of operations that you are doing in Singapore. That will inspire them to perhaps one day even join you in undertaking some of these big challenges that we talked about.
15. Finally, I must say that over the years, I have a slight disappointment and I'd like that to be rectified. Now, the number of students from Singapore going to some European universities, less the UK, has not been very high. I hope to have more Singapore students going to the European universities. And I also hope that there will be more European students who will come to Singapore and use Singapore as a platform to better understand the region. And through this we can build more bridges between Asia and Europe.
16. And this is where I will make a pitch for all the companies present here today. Because you have a very important role to enable this to happen, to provide scholarships, to provide encouragement, to provide the networks for Singapore students to go to Europe to do their internship, to explore, and also for the European students to come to Singapore and from Singapore to the region.
17. So I thought that these are just some of the ideas that we can work on together, together with the Education and Academic Committee and of course with the various business chambers across Europe, and also with the support of the various embassies.
18. And on that note, I wish you every success. I look forward to greater collaboration between Singapore and Europe, across the academic institutions and companies, and I hope that together we will plant the seeds for greater collaboration and trust for a better future for all of us. Thank you very much.