20 EU Member States released on 7 December a Joint Declaration on processors and semiconductor technologies.
The signatory Member States agree to work together in order to bolster Europe’s electronics and embedded systems value chain.
“This will include a particular effort to reinforce the processor and semiconductor ecosystem and to expand industrial presence across the supply chain, in order to address key technological, security and societal challenges. We agree to consolidate and build on Europe’s position in areas of proven expertise, and aim to establish advanced European chip design capabilities and production facilities progressing towards leading-edge nodes for data processing and connectivity.
To ensure Europe’s technology sovereignty and competitiveness, as well as our capacity to address key environmental and societal challenges and new emerging mass markets, we need to strengthen Europe’s capacity to develop the next-generation of processors and semiconductors. This includes chips and embedded systems that offer the best performance for specific applications across a wide range of sectors as well as leading-edge manufacturing progressively advancing towards 2nm nodes for processor technology. Using connectivity, where Europe enjoys global lead, as a major use case driver for developing such capacity enables Europe to set the right level of ambition. This will require a collective effort to pool investment and to coordinate actions, by both public and private stakeholders.
The signatories to this declaration agree to work together to strengthen Europe’s capabilities to design and eventually fabricate the next generation of trusted, low-power processors, for applications in high-speed connectivity, automated vehicles, aerospace and defence, health and agrifood, artificial intelligence, data-centres, integrated photonics, supercomputing and quantum computing, amongst other initiatives to bolster the whole electronics and embedded systems value chain. Furthermore, Europe can consolidate its position through joint and integrated action targeting applications and products with high-added value, as well as with complex and strong system integration of technology as a whole.
This Declaration aims at creating synergies among national research and investment initiatives and ensuring a coherent European approach of sufficient scale. It builds on, and will expand, collective efforts, including the future KDT and EuroHPC Joint Undertakings, the European Processor Initiative and the existing IPCEI on microelectronics. This will require investments from the EU budget, national budgets (including if feasible through the national Recovery and Resilience plans) and the private sector. Microelectronics, notably processor chips, are already among the key areas identified for investment for the Recovery and Resilience Facility. 20% of the European Recovery and Resilience plans should go to digital transition; this is up to 145B€ over the next 2 to 3 years. This opportunity to invest in research, design and production capability for processors in Europe should not be missed.”
The signing Member States agree to:
- Cooperate and engage in efforts to co-invest in semiconductor technologies across the full value chain
- Supporting the use of semiconductor technologies in Europe
To read the full declaration, please click here.