Digital cooperation between Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean has a paradox at its centre. The infrastructure exists. The political frameworks exist. The shared values, around ethical AI, inclusive digitalisation, and human-centred design, are genuinely shared. And yet cooperation between both regions remains fragmented, project-dependent, and difficult to sustain over time.
This is the problem the SPIDER Roadmap for EU–LAC Cooperation on Digital Transformation sets out to address.
What we built it from
The roadmap was drawn on everything the SPIDER project generated over 30 months: the mapping of over 150 EU–LAC digital dialogues and 60 bilateral agreements, a survey of 357 stakeholders across both regions, four rounds of thematic Working Group discussions, and the insights gathered through our Digital Dialogues Implementation Forum. Each source pointed to the same underlying gap.
The gap is not political will. It is design.
Dialogue processes conclude without coordination mechanisms. Agreements are signed without monitoring frameworks. Projects end, people move on, and institutional memory goes with them. What the evidence consistently showed is that the connective tissue between good intentions and sustained outcomes is missing.
The BELLA finding
One of the most striking pieces of evidence came from our stakeholder survey. More than 85% of respondents said high-speed connectivity is essential to their work. Yet more than half reported limited familiarity with their local National Research and Education Network, and a significant share rarely or never used its services.
BELLA — the network we have consistently positioned as a backbone for EU–LAC research collaboration — is underused. Not for technical reasons. For governance reasons. There are no embedded use cases, no institutional incentives, and no structured pathways that make using it the natural choice. Connectivity alone does not generate cooperation. The data confirmed this clearly.
What the roadmap proposes
The Roadmap defined eleven strategic recommendations for the future of EU–LAC Cooperation on Digital Transformation, organised into two tracks. The first addresses infrastructure, cooperation ecosystems, and bi-regional governance. The second focuses on human-centred, inclusive, and responsible digital transformation. Each recommendation comes with concrete actions, responsible actors, funding sources, timelines, and indicators.
The recommendations do not propose building new structures from scratch. They propose strengthening the connections between what already exists — so that policy frameworks, infrastructures, funding mechanisms, and institutional capacities can finally work together rather than in parallel.
This roadmap belongs to the broader EU–LAC community that helped shape it. If you work in digital policy, research infrastructure, international cooperation, or inclusive digitalisation, we hope you will read it, use it, and push back where you think we got something wrong.
The full roadmap is available.
