For decades, Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean have built a tradition of collaboration around digital transformation and research and innovation. BELLA – the Building the Europe Link to Latin America programme – is one of the most concrete expressions of that tradition: a high-capacity, publicly governed network that links the research and education communities of both regions through a dedicated submarine cable spanning 6,000 kilometres.
SPIDER was created to build on that foundation. As an EU-funded project, SPIDER brings together key research and innovation stakeholders from both regions to support the exploitation of BELLA’s full potential and to implement the outcomes of EU-LAC digital dialogues — working toward a common and orchestrated vision for an inclusive, human-centred, and sustainable digital transformation.
That work points to a clear finding: the technical foundation is solid, but connectivity on its own does not deliver cooperation.
Organisations across both regions benefit from improved connectivity, yet this does not automatically translate into structured collaboration or sustained joint work. The gap is not technical; it is strategic. It lies in how BELLA is positioned, how it connects to policy priorities, and whether it is treated as a shared cooperation instrument or simply as infrastructure.
The SPIDER Position Paper on the Exploitation of BELLA addresses that gap directly. Among the key questions it tackles:
- What does it mean to treat BELLA as a strategic public infrastructure rather than a connectivity solution, and why does that distinction matter for EU-LAC cooperation?
- Which domains offer the greatest potential for sustained collaboration, from data-intensive research and AI to cybersecurity and satellite and earth observation data?
- What enabling conditions – trust, policy alignment, and inclusive participation – determine whether cooperation actually takes root?
- What do policymakers, NRENs, and research communities across both regions each need to do differently?
