As outlined in the ‘New Agenda for Relations between the EU and Latin America and the Caribbean’, our EU-Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) cooperation is reinforcing its political engagement, boosting trade and investment, and building more sustainable, fair and inter-connected societies through Global Gateway investments. The EU-LAC Digital Alliance creates a strategic framework to foster substantial bi-regional cooperation across the full spectrum of digital and space issues.
The Alliance addresses digital transformation and innovation based on a shared commitment to a human-centric vision of the digital economy and society. Governments, private stakeholders, international finance institutions, intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations, civil society, and academia are involved in its implementation.
Objectives
The EU-LAC Digital Alliance was launched in March 2023 with the ambition to join forces for an inclusive and human-centric digital transformation in both regions and to develop bi-regional dialogue and cooperation across the full spectrum of digital issues. Both regions can benefit from further cooperating on a wide range of areas such as connectivity, regulatory dialogue, free and safe data flows and space.
The objective of the Alliance is to bring the EU and LAC digital markets closer together through the following separated and complementary goals:
- Fostering good governance, transparency, participation, and accountability
- Ensuring secure, affordable, high-speed connectivity. Fostering bi-regional cooperation in the fields of research and education, and enabling innovation in digital products and services
- Fostering multistakeholder and private sector collaboration, competitiveness, and innovation in the digital area, promoting private-public collaborative networks and mechanisms, and maximising the chances for EU and LAC partners to meet
- Enabling cooperation and access to earth observation data to key sectors working in environmental resilience, emergency risk management, or adaptation to climate change, and fostering industrial collaboration on these issues.
Implementation
To meet the goals, the following actions are being implemented:
- Improving and harmonising digital policy and regulatory frameworks through the establishment of a structured multi-stakeholder dialogue
- Expanding the BELLA programme by building secure digital regional backbone connectivity for research and education networks within the LAC region and with the EU
- Establishing a regional EU-LAC Digital Accelerator
- Establishing a regional Copernicus strategy to enhance the resilience of the Latin America and Caribbean countries by supporting their spatial data management capacity and strategic use
The EU-LAC Digital Alliance implementation strategies will explicitly integrate the dimensions of environmental protection, climate change, bettering resilience, gender equality, and digital inclusion for social inclusion.
Expected results
- At least 20 EU-LAC policy dialogues on issues of common interest
- The extension of the digital infrastructure to Peru, Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Dominican Republic
- The creation of 50 joint ventures, the participation of 100 EU organisations in supported digital business collaborations with LAC counterparts, and the establishment of a first-time collaborationbetween 40 EU organizations and their counterparts in LAC
- The setting up of two regional Copernicus centres in Panama and in Chile
