ZLT - The new regulatory sandboxes, innovation spaces, experimentation spaces, or living labs.

The Free Zones for Technology - Framework for Regulatory Sandboxes (ZLT) are physical environments, geographically located in a real or quasi-real environment, intended for the execution of tests on innovative technology-based technologies, products, services, and processes, in a safe manner, with the support and monitoring of the respective competent authorities.

Objective

The ZLT came from the need for a common vision for testing and experimentation, in a real environment, to monitor the development of new technologies and solutions. This vision contemplates the existence of a basis that facilitates the testing of products, services, processes and cross-cutting and integrated models (i.e. that cross more than one sector and may therefore be subject to different regulations and regulators).

These ZLT will allow Portugal to leverage on the following objectives:

• Position Portugal as a leader in R&D
• Attract for foreign investment
• Promote projects with an international dimension
• Promote Portuguese resources
• Stimulate the entrepreneurial ecosystem
• Foster cooperation

Background

Portugal has been developing and implementing a consistent and structured approach to investment in innovation and entrepreneurship. It has been considering the positive impact that innovative services and products have in promoting social and economic progress and the transition to a sustainable economy. In this context, the creation of conditions for Portugal to lead the regulation of emerging technologies (autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence) has been foreseen, allowing the country to host national and international projects for the development of products related to emerging technologies. Given the rapid pace of technological development, pursuing this goal is only possible by testing and experimenting the new technologies, their applications, and the business models to be adopted.

Experimentation - particularly in a real environment - therefore plays a central role in the research, development and implementation of innovative services and products. Therefore, it becomes essential to create a legal and regulatory framework that promotes and facilitates the testing of innovative technologies, services, products, and processes. Such a legal framework will contribute to accelerate research, demonstration and testing processes and, consequently, the country's competitiveness and attractiveness for foreign investment in research and innovation projects, as well as the transition of new products and services to the market and their adequate regulation. It is in this context that several countries have advanced with the creation of "regulatory sandboxes", "innovation spaces", "experimentation spaces", "living labs", among others.

In this context, the Resolution of the Council of Ministers No. 29/2020 of 21 April was published. It sets out the general principles for the creation and regulation of the ZLT and the Decree-Law 67/2021 establishes the legal basis framework for their constitution. The decree-law determines the conditions for their creation with the aim of installing, in Portugal, several ZLT, each one of them specially focused on certain technologies or sectors and thus contributing to the dynamization of the regions of Portugal by leveraging their specific characteristics.

Minimum requirements for the constitutive act of the regulatory sandboxes

The creation of the ZLT must identify the following elements:

1. Priority areas, sectors of activity or technologies for testing, always safeguarding the possibility of testing technologies, products, services and processes that cross several areas or sectors;
2. Geographical scope;
3. The objectives of stimulating the entrepreneurial fabric in the selected geographical delimitation;
4. The availability of resources, including human, materials and infrastructures, to the promoters for carrying out the tests;
5. Identification of the coordination entity (or the process for selecting it) responsible for the management, operation and maintenance of the ZLT, or the process for selecting the managing entity;
6. The access conditions to the ZLT by the promoters, as well as all the requirements for carrying out the tests, and for the termination and suspension of the tests.

The call for interest for the creation of the ZLT will be continuously open. The entities that wish to initiate the process of ZLT creation should express their interest through the Form.