The ministers responsible for the Industry of the EU Member States are invited by the French Presidency of the Council of the EU (FPEU) to give political guidance on the regulation establishing a framework of measures to support the European semiconductor ecosystem (“Chips Act”), in a public debate on the occasion of the Competitiveness Council meeting in Luxembourg on Thursday 9 June.
According to the Presidency’s report, following the presentation of the initiative by the European Commission on 8 February, the French EU Council Presidency immediately started work at technical level (9 meetings in total). Many topics were discussed. However, negotiations have been slowed down pending the submission of the internal working document (see EUROPE 12956/17).
As reported, Member States want to clarify the objectives and components of the action, including the status of the European Chips Infrastructure Consortium. Furthermore, the principles of “’first-of-a-kind' facilities” and “Open EU foundries” have been criticised by some Member States as to their added value. The issue of governance was also raised by delegations.
The need to ensure fair competition in the internal market was stressed. Here, the fear of a “subsidy race” was on many lips. In addition, some Member States wanted the eligible activities to cover the semiconductor value chain more widely.
As for the part relating to responses in crisis situations, the Member States want to clarify the role of the European Commission. Similarly, the exchanges showed a need for clarification on the functioning of the various emergency instruments, whether it be the mechanism for requesting key information from companies in the ecosystem, priority orders or joint purchases.
Thus, given the complexity and importance of the dossier, the Presidency wants to obtain guidance from the Ministers in order to “facilitate” further work. The Presidency will seek to ascertain whether the ministers are in favour of coordinated European action to address semiconductor supply difficulties.
In general, the Presidency will sound out the Member States to see whether the European Commission’s proposals correspond to their expectations and to the challenges in the short and long term. It will also look at whether the proposals facilitate the transfer of innovations from research to industry.
Objective: a political agreement in December 2022. The Czech EU Council Presidency, which will take over in July, has set itself the goal of reaching a political agreement under its mandate at the head of the EU Council during the Competitiveness Council, according to our sources.
European strategic industrial ecosystems
Due to the supply difficulties for many raw materials (aluminium, vanadium, palladium and rare gases such as neon, among others) caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the French EU Council Presidency wants to discuss with the Ministers how to improve European action in relation to the Versailles Declaration.
The idea here will be to set concrete European production and dependency reduction targets in the six strategic sectors. In addition, the Presidency seeks to identify guidelines for developing primary and secondary production in Europe and strengthening the resilience of supplies from outside Europe. It was not yet clear whether this debate would be public. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)