A group of 13 countries in the EU (excluding Bulgaria) will invest in chips and digital technologies – World

Half of the European Union countries, including Germany and France, have joined forces to invest in semiconductor components and technologies used for autonomous vehicles, information centers, artificial intelligence and supercomputers. Bulgaria is not among the 13 countries that announced the new group today.

Their declaration states that they will create an industrial alliance to change the status quo.

And now this sector in Europe is significant, but small compared to those in the United States, South Korea or Taiwan. European companies control only 10% of the global market for semiconductor components, amounting to 440 billion euros ($ 530 billion) per year.

This is not the first time that a European initiative has emerged in this sector, on which cars, smartphones, medical equipment and environmental sensors depend. Germany and France, for example, are jointly developing a European cloud services network as part of the EU’s autonomy effort in the digital age.

The founding countries state that the components “determine the characteristics of the products in which they are invested, including their security, confidentiality, energy efficiency and safety, and this will shape how the green and digital transition in Europe develops.”

Reuters recalls that the EU’s plan to help overcome the economic crisis caused by the pandemic provides for one-fifth of the funds (or 145 billion euros) to be invested in digitization projects.

• All 27 countries have been invited to the initiative, but so far Germany, France, Greece, Belgium, Estonia, Spain, Italy, Croatia, the Netherlands, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, Finland and Romania have signed.

  –

“Europe has everything it needs to diversify and reduce critical dependencies without closing its economy,” said Thierry Breton, the EU’s single market commissioner. “That’s why we need to create ambitious plans – from chip design to cutting-edge manufacturing – in order to diversify and play a leading role in our most important value chains in electronics and components.”

Funding for the joint initiative will also come from national pandemic recovery funds. “This opportunity to invest in research, design and manufacturing capabilities for processors in Europe should not be missed,” the statement said.

The goal is to boost the production capacity of the EU semiconductor sector and the faster development of energy-efficient chips by 2025. “Collective efforts will be needed to pool investment and coordinate actions by public and private actors,” the text said. The group will turn to companies to build industrial unions as it seeks funding for similar projects.

The initiative is to create a pan-European scheme for the so-called Important projects of pan-European interest, according to which the state investments in such projects will be subject to weaker restrictions in their assessment as state aid. Part of the overall effort is also to build common standards and certification in electronics.

–