Chips off the EU blocAmid lots of strategic-autonomy rhetoric and with the shortages of the past year in mind, the European Chips Act will set the suspiciously precise yet arbitrary goal of increasing its share of the global semiconductor market from 10 to 20 per cent by 2030.
To this end, von der Leyen wants the EU to match, more or less, the $52bn in investment the US government is about to shower on its chip industry. Is this going to happen? It looks pretty ambitious. As I’ve said before, the EU is more resilient than the US when it comes to shovelling out public cash, thanks to its relative lack of centralised funds, and it has a history of being heavily over-optimistic that public money will leverage in private.
Compared with other countries, there are also significant policymaking counterweights in Brussels to the industrial policy interventionists. The main one is the commission’s competition directorate. The competition commissioner, Danish heavy-hitter Margrethe Vestager, is very publicly resisting a free-for-all on state aid. Providing quieter back-up is the trade directorate, which correctly fears a whole load of trade-distorting handouts undercutting its campaign to reduce subsidies worldwide.