2024-09-02 08:00:04
It was August 20, in Dresden, Saxony, the German fortress of microelectronics. Olaf Scholz University, although not known for its joyous displays, does not shy away from its fun. For the laying of the first stone of a new giant chip company, a famous representative travels. Alongside the newly elected President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, Che-Chia Wei, the boss of TSMC, a global semiconductor manufacturer, has arrived from Taiwan.
The Asian giant has joined with the Germans Bosch and Infineon, as well as the Dutch NXP, within the European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (ESMC) for the construction of the factory. The site must provide the local car industry with chips from 2027: 2,000 jobs must be created.
An investment of 10 billion euros is possible thanks to the greatness of Berlin, which offers no less than 5 billion euros in contributions to the project. For Olaf Scholz, the visit to Dresden offered a rare opportunity to justify the merits of his policy in favor of this cutting-edge industry, in a bright political and economic situation.
Berlin, which has planned an envelope of 20 billion euros to attract major global semiconductor manufacturers to Germany, sees itself as a big winner from the Chips Act launched by Brussels in 2022. This program gathers funds 43 billion euros to double Europe’s weight in the world production of electronic chips by 2030. This is the European response to the global race for contributions currently taking place in the world’s key areas in microelectronics, especially which is the process strategy for the future.
Product change
However, across the Rhine, doubt is slowly creeping in about the reality of the announced implementation projects and the relevance of the subsidies, in a context of market decline. In Magdeburg (Saxony-Anhalt) and Ensdorf (Saarland), two industrial projects launched with great ambition in 2022 and 2023 are currently on hold.
The American Intel group, which supports Magdeburg, has the crisis. Cornered, its boss, Pat Gelsinger, announced, in early August, a global savings plan which provides for the elimination of 15,000 jobs and a 20% reduction in its investment activities. If we have not mentioned the Magdeburg factory yet, the tension has risen on the future of the project that costs 30 billion euros, of which 10 billion must be financed by Berlin… on the condition that the grant is approved by Brussels .
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