EU Backs €43 Billion Plan to Rebuild Its Chip Industry

The European Union reached a political agreement in April 2023 on the European Chips Act, a €43 billion legislative package designed to double Europe's global semiconductor manufacturing market share to 20% by 2030 and reduce the continent's dependence on Asian chip supply chains exposed as dangerously fragile during the COVID-19 pandemic. The package mobilizes both public investment and private capital toward building cutting-edge fabrication facilities, establishing competence centers, and securing supply chain resilience across the bloc.

The legislation entered into force in September 2023, running parallel to the United States' own $52 billion CHIPS and Science Act as both powers pursued industrial policy designed to reduce strategic vulnerability concentrated in Taiwan and South Korea. European officials framed the initiative as a geopolitical imperative as much as an economic one, arguing that control over semiconductor manufacturing is increasingly inseparable from national security and technological sovereignty.