Over the last decade, cooperation between Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean on digital transformation has intensified. Political dialogue has expanded, shared priorities have been articulated, and major investments in connectivity and infrastructure have taken place.
Yet, a recurring question persists: why does EU–LAC digital cooperation so often struggle to translate ambition into sustained, large-scale action?
Our recently published report of the EU–LAC Digital Dialogues Implementation Forum (DIF) offers an informed and grounded perspective on this challenge. Developed within the SPIDER project, the DIF was not conceived as another discussion space, but as a mechanism to connect dialogue with implementation, and to surface practical insights from those directly involved in shaping and delivering digital cooperation across both regions.
A Platform Designed for Learning, Not Just Talking
Between 2024 and 2025, the DIF brought together policymakers, National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), research organisations, industry actors, and civil society representatives from the EU and LAC. Through four iterative cycles of expert Working Groups and two high-level policy forums embedded in regional conferences, participants engaged in sustained exchanges on human-centric digital transformation, diversity and inclusion, governance, infrastructure, and emerging technologies.
What makes the DIF distinctive is not the breadth of topics discussed, but the way discussions evolved over time. Themes were revisited, refined, and stress-tested against changing regulatory, institutional, and geopolitical contexts. This allowed the Forum to move beyond isolated opinions and towards the identification of recurring patterns, shared constraints, and enabling conditions for cooperation.
The newly published report consolidates this collective learning. It does not attempt to catalogue every discussion or recommendation. Instead, it captures how experts across regions repeatedly described what works, what stalls, and why.
From Technology-Centred Solutions to Structural Realities
One of the strongest signals emerging from the DIF is a shift in perspective: digital cooperation challenges are rarely rooted in the absence of technology. Across discussions, participants consistently returned to structural and organisational dynamics as the primary factors shaping outcomes.
Fragmented governance arrangements, limited coordination across institutional levels, misalignment between political commitments and funding instruments, and monitoring mechanisms tied to short political cycles were all cited as factors that undermine continuity and scale. Even where infrastructure, skills, and regulatory frameworks are in place, these dynamics can prevent initiatives from maturing into durable cooperation.
This insight is particularly relevant at a time when new digital initiatives are often launched in parallel across regions and sectors. The DIF experience suggests that coordination capacity, rather than technological ambition, is increasingly the decisive variable.
Regulatory Dialogue: Shared Principles, Different Realities
Regulatory issues — especially around data, cloud services, and artificial intelligence — featured prominently throughout the Forum’s exchanges. Participants broadly recognised the EU’s regulatory frameworks as important reference points. At the same time, DIF discussions revealed a growing awareness of the limits of simple policy transfer.
Differences in institutional capacity, enforcement mechanisms, market structures, and data ecosystems mean that regulatory models cannot be copied wholesale without unintended consequences. In some cases, participants warned that poorly adapted regulation may even slow innovation or discourage cross-border collaboration.
Rather than framing regulatory alignment as a binary choice between convergence and divergence, the DIF discussions increasingly emphasised adaptive approaches: preserving shared principles such as transparency, accountability, and human-centricity, while allowing flexibility in how these principles are operationalised across diverse contexts.
Infrastructure as Potential, Not a Guarantee
The Forum also provided space for in-depth reflection on BELLA, the EU–LAC digital connectivity infrastructure supporting research, education, and innovation. Drawing on ecosystem surveys and expert focus groups, discussions moved beyond celebrating connectivity achievements to examine why infrastructure has not yet translated into widespread cooperation.
Participants repeatedly highlighted that the main barriers are not technical. Instead, limited awareness in some parts of the ecosystem, weak incentives for cross-regional collaboration, and the absence of structured matchmaking mechanisms were seen as key factors constraining uptake.
Importantly, the DIF did not treat BELLA as a standalone success or failure. Rather, it framed infrastructure as an enabling condition whose value depends on governance, coordination, and use. This perspective shifts the focus from deployment to activation.
Learning Through Practice: Why Incremental Approaches Matter
Across topics, a common thread emerged: incremental, practice-based approaches are often more effective than large, top-down programmes in the current EU–LAC context. Whether discussing infrastructure use, regulatory alignment, or inclusive digital transformation, participants converged on the value of small-scale, visible initiatives that generate evidence, trust, and institutional learning.
In the case of BELLA, this translated into concrete reflections on pilot projects in areas such as environmental data sharing, digital health platforms, high-performance computing, and secure data spaces. These examples were not presented as a definitive roadmap, but as illustrations of how cooperation can be built progressively, aligning technical, regulatory, and organisational dimensions over time.
Why the DIF Matters Going Forward
Its relevance stems from its role as a structured space for collective sense-making, where diverse actors can identify shared challenges, test assumptions, and refine approaches to cooperation.
The DIF report reflects this ethos. It offers a consolidated analytical foundation for future EU–LAC digital cooperation, grounded in repeated expert exchange rather than one-off consultations. Its insights feed directly into the development of the forthcoming EU–LAC Digital Transformation Roadmap, while remaining relevant to policymakers, programme designers, infrastructure operators, and research communities working across both regions.
The full EU–LAC Digital Dialogues Implementation Forum report is now available, providing a deeper and more comprehensive account of the discussions, evidence, and recommendations that emerged from the Forum.
