BRUSSELS - "With the European Chips Act we want to make the EU an industrial leader in this strategic market,
we have set ourselves the goal of having 20% of the global market share of chip production here in Europe in 2030, now we are at 9%, but during this period the demand will double, this means quadruple our efforts
".
This was stated
by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen
, presenting the
bill on semiconductors
.
The Chips Act "will support the EU's ambition" to become a leader in the sector "with substantial investments: 15 billion euros in further private and public investments by 2030, on top of the 30 billion euros we have already planned", financed "by the Next Generation Eu, the Horizon program and national budgets".
"These funds will be accompanied by further long-term private investments," added Von der Leyen.
"Europe is the continent where all industrial revolutions began. And it can be the home of the next industrial revolution", stressed von der Leyen, indicating that the European Chips Act "will focus on five areas".
First, "research, a field in which Europe already excels": "We will further focus on small and energy-efficient transistors and disruptive technologies for artificial intelligence," he explained.
The second and third objectives concern industrial innovation and the creation of "advanced production plants, which involve enormous initial costs".
"Therefore - underlined the president of the EU executive -, we are adapting our rules on state aid, under strict conditions. This will allow, for the first time, public support for European production plants 'first of their kind' to benefit of all of Europe ".
Brussels also provides support for smaller and more innovative companies, "to find employees with the right skills, industrial partners and equity financing", highlighted the leader.
The last priority concerns the security of supply chains.
"It should be clear that no country - and not even continent - can be completely self-sufficient. Europe will always work to keep global markets open and connected. In the interest of our world," von der Leyen observed, however warning about the the need to "address the bottlenecks that slow European growth".
Europe, the president added, intends to build "partnerships on chips, with like-minded countries, such as the United States or Japan, but the key to our success lies in European innovators, in our level researchers. world, in the people who have made our continent prosper over the decades ".