Regulatory Portability
33 countries, one optional 34th regime
A company crossing a LATAM border meets duplicative approvals, and only about 14 of the region’s 33 countries are in the PCT. Constitute a voluntary 34th regime as a plurilateral compact on existing rails.
The rationale
Latin America’s deep tech policy landscape is a patchwork. Several countries run strategies and technology-transfer programs, yet a company that crosses a border meets duplicative approvals, uneven incentives and slow, case-by-case rulemaking. The fragmentation is measurable at the IP layer: a single PCT application is recognized by 158 contracting states, but only about 14 of the region’s 33 countries are members, with Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Venezuela outside. Investors and founders both told the research that the missing layer is coordination, portable rules and the institutional capacity that lets one company scale regionally under one predictable framework.
The name is the design: 33 countries plus one optional regime, mirroring the EU’s 27 plus a 28th. It would be voluntary and modular, offering standardized approvals, regional sandboxes, digital filings and portable credentials to whichever states opt in, in phases. The report leaves the constituting vehicle as an open question and its own recommendation card answers it: a plurilateral compact housed within CELAC or the Pacific Alliance, piloted on rails that already exist. Cross-border digital identity is moving from pilot to practice through Mercosur’s Digital Citizen, and Mercosur and the Pacific Alliance signed mutual recognition of their Authorized Economic Operator programs in 2025.
A region-wide framework sounds politically unrealistic and the report concedes it. There is no EU-style supranational authority, no shared legal backbone, and no obvious steward for standards, updates and dispute resolution. The argument for a voluntary modular design is that it may lower the sovereignty cost enough to allow phased adoption and create incentives for convergence; that is a hypothesis and nobody has tested it. What is no longer hypothetical is that the European version moved from petition to legislation: the Commission tabled its 28th Regime proposal on 18 March 2026, fifteen months after founders asked for one.
The evidence
What it unlocks
One startup status a founder can carry across borders, so entering a second LATAM market stops meaning starting the paperwork from zero.
It has been done before
Europe’s 28th Regime, from petition to proposal
A founder petition in December 2024 asked the incoming European Commission for an optional pan-European company form. On 18 March 2026 the Commission tabled it as a regulation, COM(2026) 322: an optional, self-standing corporate status open to startups and scale-ups, incorporated in under 48 hours for a maximum of €100 where standard templates are used through the EU central interface, with no minimum capital requirement at any point in the company’s life. It is now before the Parliament and the Council, with adoption expected in 2026 or 2027 and application anticipated from 2028. An optional regime layered over 27 national systems reached tabled law without a treaty change, and adoption is still open.
First moves
- 0–6 months
Publish the portability inventory
Map, country by country, which approvals, credentials and filings a deep tech company must repeat when it crosses a border, and which are already recognized under Mercosur’s Digital Citizen, the 2025 Mercosur and Pacific Alliance AEO agreement or PAHO reliance. Publish it as an open, dated table.
LADP coalition secretariat + Mercosur and Pacific Alliance technical secretariats - 6–18 months
Draft the model law and the opt-in instrument
Produce a model law for a voluntary deep tech startup label covering incorporation, sandbox access and portable credentials, plus the plurilateral compact text needed for CELAC or Pacific Alliance adoption, and get two governments to table it.
National economy and innovation ministries + a plurilateral secretariat (CELAC, Pacific Alliance) - 18–36 months
Run the label in three countries under one steward
Launch with three adopting states, name the institution that maintains standards, updates and dispute resolution, and publish the first cohort of companies registered under the label with what each no longer has to repeat.
Adopting governments + the designated steward institution
How we would know it worked
- States that have adopted the model law or signed the compact, published by the steward institution, rising from zero to three.
- Approvals and credentials a labeled company no longer repeats when entering a second market, counted against the portability inventory baseline.
- Companies registered under the regional label, reported quarterly by the steward, and the share still active after 24 months.
- LATAM PCT contracting states, from WIPO’s live list, rising above 14 of 33.
What could go wrong
A regime nobody opts into
Voluntary status is worth only what it buys. If the label carries no faster approval, no sandbox access and no procurement preference, founders will keep incorporating in Delaware and the register will sit empty. Containment: attach at least two concrete entitlements before launch, and publish take-up quarterly so an empty register is visible in the first year.
Sovereignty objection at ratification
Anything that looks like a supranational authority stalls in national congresses, and one change of government can pull a signatory out. Containment: build it as opt-in secondary legislation rather than treaty amendment, leave every national regulator’s veto intact, and make exit costless so entry is cheap.
Who acts
Rests on
07 Uneven Clinical Trials Three routes out of a five-regulator patchwork
15 A Pan-LATAM Forum One flagship, one annual KPI release
14 Research & Visibility An open data commons and a funding catalogue
The data behind it
Brazil hosts 41% of the region’s ventures, more than the next four countries combined. The “Big 5” account for 83% of everything mapped.
As published in the report, September 2025.
SourcesLatin American Dynamism Project (LADP), Accelerating Deep Tech in Latin America; Tracxn Technologies, Tracxn, LATAM deep tech company database (LADP extract); EMERGE (Emerge Brasil) & Cubo Itaú, Radar Deep Tech LATAM 2025
Methodology: LADP/Tracxn count and share. ledger #25/#26: EMERGE's independent mapping disagrees sharply (Brazil 72.3% vs 40.8%; different rank order). Neither is "the" number, a definitional gap, not an error.
| Category | Current |
|---|---|
| Brazil | 1,048 |
| Mexico | 358 |
| Argentina | 256 |
| Chile | 251 |
| Colombia | 219 |
| Rest of LATAM | 434 |