14 EU countries team up to gain larger share of global semiconductor market

Despite being the world's largest trading block, the European Union has totally missed the digital technology train. Compared with the US and Asia, Europe doesn't have a large presence in the semiconductor market nor does it have massive Internet giants. As things stand right now, European companies hold just 10 percent of the $530 billion global semiconductor market.

In an effort to rectify this situation, a number of European countries have teamed up to reduce dependency on foreign countries. The joint declaration is open to all of the EU's 27 member states, but so far only Germany, France, Greece, Belgium, Estonia, Spain, Italy, Croatia, the Netherlands, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, Finland, and Romania have signed up.

The semiconductor initiative has a target of 2025 or boosting the EU's semiconductor manufaturing capabilities and to fuel development of faster and more energy-efficient processors. The money for this new push will come from EU and national COVID-19 pandemic recovery funds.

The coronavirus pandemic and current geopolitical tensions have also highlighted the dangers of having to import crucial items. And the EU relies on other parts of the world for most of its data processing and electronic communications chips.

“Europe has all it takes to diversify and reduce critical dependencies, while remaining open,” said Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner. “We will therefore need to set ambitious plans, from design of chips to advanced manufacturing progressing towards 2nm nodes, with the aim of differentiating and leading on our most important value chains.”

Fortune has more details over here.