By: Kimberly Ramkhalawan
March 14, 2023
Some €145m from Team Europe, including €50m from the EU budget has been put forward to boost digital cooperation between the European Union-Latin America and the Caribbean through its Digital Alliance. On Tuesday, the program was launched as a joint initiative aimed at championing “a human-centric approach to digital transformation”.
According to the EU, “the Alliance’s aim is to foster the development of secure, resilient and human-centric digital infrastructures on the basis of a values-based framework, ensuring a democratic and transparent enabling environment and putting a strong emphasis on privacy and digital rights. It is the first intercontinental digital partnership agreed between both regions under Global Gateway investment strategy, the EU’s offer for trusted and sustainable connections with partner countries”.
Launching the initiative at a high-level event on Tuesday in Bogota, Columbia by Executive Vice President of the European Commission Margrethe Vestager, the Swedish Presidency of the EU Council and representatives from the Latin American and Caribbean and EU Member States, shared they “want to strengthen our common work on crucial digital areas. We want to boost secure links with Latin America and Caribbean partners. Together, we will promote our vision for an inclusive, sustainable and human-centric digital transformation. This builds on the EU digital rights and principles and the eLAC Digital Agenda 2024”.Vestager, Executive is also the Vice-President for a Europe Fit for the Digital Age.
The initiative is said to be a process to finalise a joint declaration to underpin the Alliance was kickstarted towards the Summit. The Alliance will provide a forum for regular high-level dialogue and cooperation on priority topics. Both sides will work together on crucial digital areas such as infrastructure, regulatory environment, skills development, technology, entrepreneurship and innovation, and digitalisation of public services, as well as Earth observation data and satellite navigation applications and services.
It will rely on two important platforms for coordination, creating synergies in and between both regions: the D4D (Digital4Development) Hub for Team Europe partners, and ECLAC (UN Economic Commission for LAC) for Latin American and Caribbean partners. Governments, private stakeholders, international finance institutions, intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations, civil society and academia will be involved in the implementation of the alliance.
Participants also discussed proposals for a digital investment agenda involving the private sector of both regions, in view of the EU-CELAC Summit in July 2023. Representatives of international finance institutions, CEOs of EU and LAC companies, civil society and academia also participated in the event.
The program stems from the EU-CELAC Ministerial Meeting held in October last year, which was co-chaired by High Representative/Vice-President Josep Borrelland Argentinian Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero, who called for setting-up an EU-LAC Digital Alliance, underlining its benefits for both regions.
Speaking at the event, Borrell said “this new EU-LAC Digital Alliance is based on shared democratic and social values. Citizens’ democratic rights must be protected as much online as they are protected off-line. We also want to step up the regulatory dialogue and cooperation to close the digital divide and foster sustainable development. In today’s new geopolitical realities, these are crucial aspects for upholding the dignity and freedom of each human being”.
In order to promote connectivity, innovation and the digitalisation of government and business, the EU-LAC Digital Alliance will support the digital projects of our EU-LAC Investment Agenda, that will be discussed at the Summit and in particular, a number of Global Gateway initiatives.
Jutta Urpilainen, Commissioner for International Partnerships shared that the “EU-LAC Digital Alliance illustrates what the EU’s Global Gateway strategy is all about: accelerating the twin transition, connecting people in our partner countries and the EU with trusted, sustainable and human-centric infrastructure, and democratic and transparent enabling environment which will tackle inequalities. Through this ever-stronger cooperation between the EU and LAC, we will continue to bring our people closer and to bring more opportunities for our citizens and businesses”.
Notable examples of the Digital Alliance in action include the extension of the BELLA fibre-optic cable, building secure digital backbone connectivity and bringing the research communities of the EU and LAC closer together. Also part of this is the implementation of a regional Copernicus strategy including two regional Copernicus data centres in Panama and Chile and the establishment of an EU-LAC Digital Accelerator to foster multi-stakeholder and private sector collaboration, competitiveness, skills and innovation in the digital area. This will include the promotion of impact investments and support to the delivery of e-services by both public and private entities.
So far, the initiative has been described as a connectivity highway that spans 43,000 km of fibre optics across five Latin American countries with 65m people benefiting from the program, marking a a literal connection between both continents, as a digital bridge between both regions. Earlier this week , one of the two regional Copernicos data centre located in Santiago, Chile was launched.