Following its adoption on 11 July 2023, the European Chips Act has now entered into force on 21 September 2023.
In addition, the Regulation on the Chips Joint Undertaking (JU) has now also entered into force. As part of this regulation, the scope of the current Key Digital Technologies Joint Undertaking (KDT JU), will be significantly expanded and will now also support the research, development, innovation, and future manufacturing capacities in the European semiconductor ecosystem.
To account for this increase in scope, the KDT JU will be renamed “Chips Joint Undertaking” (Chips JU), and the EU will increase its budget from €1.8 billion to almost €4.2 billion.
The Chips JU launch event will take place in Brussels on 31 November and 1 December.
Background
The Covid-19 crisis highlighted the critical dependency of the EU on a limited number of foreign suppliers of chips and semiconductors.
The European Chips Act puts a comprehensive set of measures in place to strengthen the manufacturing capacity for chips on EU territory and to stimulate the EU economy by scaling up manufacturing infrastructure, providing new jobs and training opportunities in this sector, and supporting EU semiconductor research and innovation. This set of measures is ultimately meant to ensure the EU’s security of supply and resilience and support research, scale-up and innovation across the whole value chain.
The total funding intended for the European Chips Act is €39.7 billion in public and private investment and €3.3 billion from the EU budget. Research calls will be published as part of the newly established Chips Joint Undertaking.
The European Union’s current market share in the global semiconductor market is 10%; through the European Chips Act, the EU aims to increase this global market share to 20% by 2030.