H2020 EU-LAC ResInfra project served to boost the bi-regional collaboration on research infrastructures (RIs) between European Union (EU) and Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) countries. To this aim a variety of different activities were developed that have proven the importance of RIs as a key pillar in boosting the R&D activities between regions and the need to maintain a sustainable collaboration at governmental level. Despite the success of the results of EU-LAC ResInfra Project, there is still work to do in order to have a solid and sustainable framework of cooperation to enhance the bi-regional collaboration on research infrastructures. Latin America and the Caribbean has a unique landscape of natural laboratories that can provide comparative advantages to host the development of RI’s, as well as high impact science on specific thematic areas that are a priority in both regions. It has been deemed necessary to increase the visibility of both EU and LAC RI models and characteristics to advance in a greater collaboration for a common roadmapping exercise, agreements in long term funding, transnational access, capacity building and mutual openness for the development of a RIs common area. EU-LAC ResInfra Plus has brought together a wide and comprehensive consortium of 20 crucial partners from the EU and LAC countries. The project includes a balanced mix of governmental representatives responsible of the development of RIs policies at national level, RTD funding agencies from EU countries (Finland, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Romania, and Spain) and LAC countries (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, Peru and Uruguay,) as well as a consolidated group of European RIs: Instruct-ERIC, LifeWatch-ERIC, RICAP and MIRRI-ERIC. This broad spectrum of partners gathers to all the RIs stakeholders to ensure that the project activities and outputs serve to strengthening the bi-regional collaboration.

EU-LAC ResInfra will identify a number of Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) Research Infrastructures (RIs) that may be considered eligible for the construction of a bi-regional collaboration. This will be carried out through the definition of minimal key requirements these RIs would need to develop in the coming years. To this aim, the Project will build on the prioritisation results of the EU-CELAC Senior Official Meeting on Science and Technology (SOM) Working Group (WG) on Research Infrastructures (RI) and, more specifically, will take as a reference the mapping exercises developed in previous EU funded projects. In addition, EU-LAC ResInfra will develop a map of National and Regional Research Infrastructure policies, and their corresponding strategies and plans, including funding mechanisms that might be used to support the construction and operation of future EU-LAC RIs. Furthermore, EU-LAC ResInfra will use all the results and information obtained for drafting a Sustainability Plan, which will be presented to the EU-CELAC WG RI for discussion and endorsement. The Plan will include specific actions to support the bi-regional collaboration in a mid-term perspective. The objectives are to design specific variable geometry instruments for co-funding RIs of common interest, and to design measures that pursue the strengthening of the bi-regional RI cooperation, seeking to maximise the impact of the RI collaboration in the construction of the EU-CELAC Common Research Area. Finally, the Project aims to show the feasibility of the EU-LAC RI collaboration through existing examples, thanks to the development of four Pilots in different scientific domains that are linked to some existing Research Infrastructures: INSTRUCT-ERIC, LIFEWATCH-ERIC, E-RIHS and RICAP.