FOCUS ON – TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION
INSIDE THE EU'S CHIPS ACT Back in September 2021, EC President Ursula von der Leyen announced the EU Chips Act, a €43 billion investment scheme to increase domestic chip production in the wake of the global semiconductor shortage that has been gripping the world since late 2020. by Ash Jones
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t seemed at the time that she was looking to allow the EU's single market to counteract China's burgeoning economic dominance, and many of the top semiconductor suppliers were based out of East Asia, in countries such as Taiwan and South Korea - often thousands of miles away at a time where supply chain disruptions are common. More recently, the Commission's Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager mentioned the Chips Act in her opening speech for EU Industry Days under the guise of dealing with "strategic dependencies" - resources susceptible to choke10 Industry Europe
holds and reliant on partners outside the European single market. The EU has laid out the plans to increase chip production within the bloc, in a bid to double its market share by 2030. This faced criticism by German think tank Stiftung Neue Verantwortung (SNV) which suggested it was "doomed to fail" and that legislation should be put in place to rebuild the EU's entire chip production sector. Regardless, semiconductors remain an important part of the digital transition, being essential for the production of consumer electronics, electric vehicles and robotics.
By 2030, the EU wants to produce 20% of the world's semiconductors and set up a fabrication plant to produce 2-nanometre chips which to aid in "twin transitions" digital and green - as it is known internally for the transport and tech sector, including pushes into AI and cloud-based software. It was inspired by a similar move by US President Joe Biden to tackle the semiconductor shortage directly and ensure more chips are developed on US soil, which should see around $56 billion (a total investment exceeding $150 billion) in chip R&D until 2026.
