The European Union executive’s arm will meet with companies from the technology and semiconductor sector this week amid concerns from business that the bloc’s competitiveness drive is falling short.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is due to meet late on Wednesday with companies including ASML, a leading supplier of lithography systems to the semiconductor industry, Siemens, Nokia and Ericsson, people familiar with the matter said. It comes as the bloc seeks to boost its competitiveness amid increasing pressure from US and Chinese rivals.
The European Commission chief spokesperson Paula Pinho confirmed the meeting.
The Chief Executive Officer of Netherlands-based ASML, Christophe Fouquet, noted last week that Europe accounted for a tiny percentage of the company’s net system sales last year. The region represented just 1% of ASML’s system sales, despite the firm being Europe’s most valuable company. “We see that as a challenge,” Fouquet said at the company’s annual meeting.
“We therefore decided to team up with a group of companies in Europe such as Airbus SE, Siemens AG, Nokia, Ericsson, and SAP SE,” he said. “We are teaming up basically to bring together some ideas, some concrete requests to Europe and to the different governments in Europe in order to work together on the ecosystem.”
Speaking at a meeting of her own Christian Democrat party in Berlin on Monday, von der Leyen, insisted that “competitiveness is the European Commission’s main concern,” pledging to give companies “a faster and more targeted environment” to allow them to grow. It follows criticism from German business about the slow pace of the EU’s simplification push.
Still, the EU is insisting it’s listening to the concerns of business. It has proposed a competitiveness fund of more than €400 billion to boost industrial resilience, technological leadership and innovation as part of its next long-term budget which starts in 2028.
In addition, the EU executive is finalizing a tech sovereignty package which will include rules on chips and “sovereign” cloud computing. This is in addition to the cybersecurity and digital networks acts.