A look at the EU's plans for local chips, aided by ASML and more; SEMI estimates 10 new facilities in Europe by 2025, compared to 14 in the US and 21 in Taiwan
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Context & Ripple Effects
SEMI's tally — 10 new European fabs by 2025 against 14 in the US and 21 in Taiwan — quantifies the gap behind Brussels' push. The EU first tried to close it by courting TSMC or Samsung for an advanced fab back in early 2021 (talks over a TSMC or Samsung plant), and Intel followed months later with a $20B regional fab plan spread across several member states.
What changes with this report is the argument for how Europe competes: not by matching Asian subsidy scales, but by leaning on ASML, whose equipment position gives the bloc leverage — a point ASML and Imec later made explicitly when arguing the US depends on European chip tech at the €2.5B Belgian research hub inauguration.
First-order effects
- ASML is cast as the indispensable local partner in the EU buildout — the one European firm whose technology makes 'local chips' more than a subsidy program.
- SEMI's 10-versus-14-versus-21 count hands EU officials a concrete benchmark to justify the scale of state aid they are assembling for projects like Intel's proposed multi-site fab.
Second-order effects
- Taiwanese suppliers arriving with anchor projects hit the EU's own friction first: those building out TSMC's €10B Germany plant report struggling with complex permitting, labor, and environmental rules (suppliers' complaints on the Germany plant) — a drag that offsets headline investment figures.
- Member states end up competing against each other and against US incentives for the same scarce fab projects, pushing effective subsidy levels upward across all three regions in SEMI's count.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, fab siting is decided by industrial policy as much as cost, with Europe's share hinging on whether research strengths like ASML and Imec convert into volume production rather than remaining an upstream dependency others rely on.
- The trajectory points toward codified targets — the bloc later struck a provisional ~$47B Chips Act deal aiming to double its global output share to 20% by 2030 — making capacity counts like SEMI's the recurring scorecard for whether such programs deliver.
The trend: Semiconductor capacity is being allocated by national and regional industrial policy, with each bloc subsidizing fabs toward supply autonomy and Europe still playing catch-up.