EU Chips Act “needs a reality check,” say auditors

The EU is “very unlikely” to meet its target of a 20 percent market share in global semiconductor manufacturing by 2030, according to the European Court of Auditors (ECA). “The EU urgently needs a reality check in its strategy for the microchips sector,” says Annemie Turtelboom, the ECA Member in charge of the audit. “The 20 percent target was essentially aspirational – meeting it would require us to approximately quadruple our production capacity by 2030, but we’re nowhere close to that with our current rate of progress.”

The ECA points out that the 86 billion euros in funding triggered by the EU Chips Act are dwarfed by the investments of top global manufacturers over a similar period: these firms budgeted 405 billion euros in 2020-2023. The latest forecast from the European Commission, published in July 2024, predicts that the EU’s overall share of the global value chain in a fast-growing market would increase only slightly, from 9.8 percent in 2022 to 11.7 percent by 2030.

NXP CEO Kurt Sievers previously estimated that the EU’s market share target would cost 500 billion euros.