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Europe’s proposed Chips Act 2.0 should be judged not by how many fabs it announces, but by whether it turns research into commercially viable production, attracts private capital, secures buyers and reduces critical supply vulnerabilities. The European Commission adopted the proposal on June 3, 2026; it is not yet EU law, and its final provisions may change in negotiations. (European Commission proposal.)
The first Act built a framework, not semiconductor security
The 2023 European Chips Act gave the EU a shared semiconductor policy framework, supported research and pilot infrastructure, improved coordination and helped mobilise public and private investment. The Commission’s evaluation also credits it with strengthening stakeholder confidence. Those are meaningful institutional and research gains, but they are not the same as dependable manufacturing capacity or supply-chain control. The Commission says Europe remains structurally dependent on non-EU suppliers, particularly for advanced technology nodes. (Commission evaluation and proposal.)
Keep the scorecard precise: a pilot line is not a mass-production fab; a project announcement is not completed capacity; public funding committed is not private capital at risk; and a factory located in Europe may still rely on imported equipment, software, materials, intellectual property and customers. A useful project tracker should distinguish announcement, state-aid approval, financing close, construction, tool installation, process qualification, customer qualification, volume production and sustainable utilisation.
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Fix 1: Close the gap between pilot lines and commercial production
The Commission’s evaluation identifies the lab-to-fab gap as a central weakness: Europe has strengthened its technology infrastructure and advanced technologies, but struggles to industrialise them and reach scale. Research success does not establish that a process can deliver the yield, reliability, throughput and cost required by customers.
That transition is difficult for practical reasons. Pilot lines can show that a process works without demonstrating that it will be economical at volume. Start-ups often need substantial capital for reliability testing, customer qualification and production ramp-up. Customers, meanwhile, hesitate to redesign products around a supplier without a proven record. Manufacturing also requires an ecosystem—equipment, materials, packaging, maintenance, software and experienced staff—not simply a fab building.
Chips Act 2.0 should fund the transition explicitly. Support should cover yield improvement, reliability testing, packaging and qualification as well as process research. Grants and other public support should be tied to published milestones, including customer qualification and credible production targets. That lets policymakers distinguish operating capability from a ribbon-cutting or a pilot demonstration.
Fix 2: Make financing crowd in private capital
The Commission says limited private investment, especially late-stage and institutional capital, continues to constrain European semiconductor firms. This is not just a question of spending more. Policymakers should identify which risks private investors will not bear, why, and whether public support is addressing that specific market failure rather than underwriting a project that cannot survive commercially. (Commission evaluation.)
A stronger financing model could provide an EU-level facility for semiconductor scale-ups and use guarantees, co-investment or carefully designed first-loss protection to attract long-term institutional investors. It should separate public-interest resilience projects from projects expected to earn commercial returns, assess the ecosystem value of a project rather than just its headline construction cost, and require credible customers, operating teams and supply-chain access.
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Support also needs consequences. Agreements should set out investment, capacity, employment and production commitments, with transparent reporting and clawbacks or renegotiation if recipients materially fail to meet them. The goal is not to eliminate industrial risk; it is to make clear who bears it and what Europe receives in return.
Fix 3: Create demand before capacity comes online
A subsidised factory is not viable simply because it has been built. It needs customers willing to qualify, buy or co-design its products. The first Act leaned heavily toward supply; the Commission’s new proposal places greater emphasis on demand. That change should produce practical mechanisms, not just a broader statement of intent. (European Parliament Research Service briefing; Chips Act 2.0 policy page.)
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Procurement should reward resilience and reliable supply, not impose an unrealistic rule that every component be European. A blanket “Buy European” requirement could increase costs, restrict technical choice or overlook the global inputs on which European production itself depends. A July 2026 opinion argued for a stronger European preference or local-value label; that is commentary, not a settled feature of the proposal. (Cinco Días opinion.)
Fix 4: Define strategic projects by the vulnerability they solve
The proposal expands attention to strategic projects across the value chain, including manufacturing, design, equipment, materials, packaging and assembly. “Strategic” should not become a label attached to any large or politically visible investment. A project should address an identified supply vulnerability, have a credible technology and operating plan, show a route to qualified customers, and contribute capabilities likely to endure after public support ends. Cross-border benefits, workforce needs, energy, water, environmental effects and logistics belong in the assessment too. (Commission proposal and evaluation.)
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Europe should avoid defining resilience as a race to build every leading-edge process domestically. Its portfolio needs advanced logic for AI and high-performance computing, but also mature-node and analogue chips for cars and factories; power semiconductors for electrification; sensors, radio-frequency and photonics components; secure microcontrollers; and the packaging, testing and integration that turn dies into usable products. A prestigious advanced-node project cannot compensate for shortages in the chips used by vehicles, medical equipment, energy systems and industrial controls.
Advanced packaging deserves particular attention. Chiplets and 2.5D/3D packaging can combine dies made using different processes, and are increasingly relevant to AI, high-performance computing, automotive and industrial uses. The Commission has described a proposed project pairing leading-edge manufacturing with chiplet integration and advanced packaging, with an estimated €3–4 billion in potential public and private investment. That is a project estimate, not a confirmed final EU spending commitment. (Commission project information.)
Policy should fund packaging, assembly and testing alongside wafer fabrication; connect design houses to packaging facilities early; support interoperability and design enablement for chiplets; and measure qualified capacity and yield, not only planned facilities.
Fix 5: Build supply-chain intelligence with safeguards
Governments cannot prepare for a shortage they cannot see. The Commission’s impact assessment says current arrangements rely substantially on voluntary information-sharing outside crises and have not delivered sufficiently deep or timely supply-chain intelligence. The blind spots extend beyond wafer fabs to materials, equipment, packaging, substrates and critical components. (Commission impact assessment.)
A stronger system should collect regular, proportionate information on capacity, utilisation, inventories, lead times and disruptions; stress-test critical sectors such as defence, healthcare, energy, communications and automotive; and set out an escalation process before shortages become crises. It also needs secure, confidential reporting, with data minimisation, aggregation where company-specific detail is unnecessary, cybersecurity protections and independent oversight. Any emergency intervention should have clear limits and due process. Better visibility should not become routine micromanagement or expose trade secrets.
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Fix 6: Coordinate state aid across the EU
The proposal maintains the first-of-a-kind state-aid approach, subject to EU competition rules. National governments may provide much of the fiscal support, but their ability to do so differs. Without stronger coordination, wealthier states can outbid smaller ones, subsidy offers can distort location decisions, and cross-border projects can be fragmented by separate procedures. (Commission proposal.)
EU coordination should go beyond approving national subsidies after the fact. Publish comparable data on support, milestones and outcomes; set common expectations for clawbacks and capacity commitments; and require major publicly supported projects to demonstrate EU-wide benefits where relevant. A predictable, coordinated approval path can reduce duplication while leaving legitimate national decisions subject to common rules.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Fix 7: Treat skills and infrastructure as part of the investment
Facilities require process engineers, equipment technicians, materials scientists, software specialists, reliability engineers and experienced managers. A project that is approved before its workforce plan is credible risks commissioning delays or an inability to reach stable production. Funding should therefore require plans for recruitment, training and retention, and track whether permanent specialist jobs are filled rather than relying on announced totals.
Training must include vocational and technician pathways, not only university research programmes. Europe also needs practical routes for specialists to move between Member States, recognition of qualifications, retraining from adjacent industries and workforce policies that can attract and retain experienced talent.
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Replace the single market-share goal with resilience measures
The original political ambition to reach 20% of global semiconductor production by 2030 offers a headline, but market share alone does not tell policymakers whether critical users can keep operating during a disruption. The European Parliament Research Service’s 2026 briefing says the goal is unlikely under current conditions. That is a forecast, not a final result before 2030. (EPRS briefing.)
Keep a market-share measure if useful, but pair it with indicators that describe supply security: qualified capacity for strategically important chips; time needed to replace a disrupted supplier; the number of qualified second sources; capacity and yields in packaging and testing; availability of critical design, equipment and materials inputs; scale-up survival; and the time from pilot demonstration to qualified volume production. Installed wafer capacity matters, but only alongside utilisation, yield and customers.
What the second Act should avoid
- Autarky: Semiconductor supply chains are global. Europe should reduce critical dependencies and diversify suppliers, not promise to make everything domestically.
- Fab-count politics: More buildings do not automatically mean more resilience. The chips must be relevant, qualified and supported by upstream inputs and skilled operators.
- Unconditional subsidies: Public investment should address a defined market failure and have measurable obligations.
- Indiscriminate protectionism: Geographic preference can have costs and may not secure the imported equipment or materials a European plant needs.
- A leading-edge-only strategy: Advanced AI chips matter, but so do mature, power, analogue, sensor and embedded chips used throughout the economy.
The distinction that should guide the negotiations is between resilience, diversification, sovereignty and autarky. Resilience is the ability to withstand and recover from disruption; diversification means having alternatives; sovereignty means controlling or guaranteeing access to capabilities deemed essential. None requires Europe to sever global partnerships. The Commission’s stated objective is to reduce strategic dependencies and vulnerabilities, not end international interdependence. (Commission policy page.)
Chips Act 2.0 will be a stronger policy if it converts Europe’s research base into production that customers will qualify and buy, backed by investors willing to stay through the ramp-up and directed toward genuine supply vulnerabilities. The test is not how much money is announced or how many fabs appear on a map; it is whether Europe can sustain critical capabilities when supply is disrupted.
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