The European Chips Act will bolster Europe’s competitiveness and resilience in semiconductor technologies and applications, and help achieve both the digital and green transition. It will do this by strengthening Europe’s technological leadership in the field. Following the approval by the Parliament and the Council, the regulation entered into force on 21 September 2023.
Chips are strategic assets for key industrial value chains. With the digital transformation, new markets for the chip industry are emerging such as highly automated cars, cloud, Internet of Things, connectivity, space, defence and supercomputers.
1 trillion microchips were manufactured around the world in 2020 EU's share of the global microchips marketRecent global semiconductor shortages forced factory closures in a range of sectors, from cars to healthcare devices. This made more evident the extreme global dependency of the semiconductor value chain on a very limited number of actors in a complex geopolitical context.
The findings of the Chips Survey, launched by the European Commission, highlighted that industry expects demand for chips to double by 2030. This reflects the growing importance of semiconductors for European industry and society. There will be challenges in meeting this increasing demand, especially in light of the current semiconductor supply crisis.
In her 2021 State of the Union speech, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen set the vision for Europe’s chip strategy, to jointly create a state-of-the-art European chip ecosystem. This will include production, as well as connecting the EU’s world-class research, design and testing capacities. And already in her 2022 State of the Union speech, President von der Leyen highlighted that the first chips gigafactory in Europe will break ground in the coming months.
With the European Chips Act, the EU will address semiconductor shortages and strengthen Europe’s technological leadership. It will mobilise more than € 43 billion of public and private investments and set measures to prepare, anticipate and swiftly respond to any future supply chain disruptions, together with Member States and our international partners.
This will be achieved based on three pillars of action:
Build and reinforce capacity to innovate in the design, manufacturing and packaging of advanced chips
The Chips Act itself should result in additional public and private investments of more than €15 billion.
These investments will complement:
In total, more than €43 billion of policy-driven investment will support the Chips Act until 2030, which will be broadly matched by long-term private investment.
The Chips Act proposes:
