The proposal in brief

Following the call for evidence on the evaluation of the European Chips Act, the Commission adopted the proposal for a Chips Act 2.0 (COM(2026) 504) on 3 June 2026 as part of the European Technological Sovereignty Package, replacing Regulation (EU) 2023/1781. The first Chips Act mobilised more than €52 billion and created competence centres, five pilot lines and a design platform, but its headline ambition – doubling the EU’s global market share to 20 % by 2030 – was judged highly unlikely by the European Court of Auditors, which forecast a share of 11.7 %; the EU produces about 10 % of the world’s semiconductors and almost none of the leading AI chips. The new proposal keeps the three pillars but rebalances towards demand and industrial deployment: a reinforced Chips for Europe Initiative, European Semiconductor Technology Initiatives and Grand Challenges for AI chips; strategic projects including an open flagship foundry for advanced manufacturing; permitting capped at twelve months and a Semiconductor Regions of Excellence label; Demand Accelerators connecting European chipmakers with industrial buyers, security-of-supply declarations in tenders and Union added-value criteria favouring chips designed, manufactured or controlled in the EU; expanded supply-chain monitoring with early-warning indicators and a sharper crisis-response mechanism; a European Chips Skills Academy; and a target of around €120 billion in investment by 2035. The file is under negotiation: Parliament’s ITRE committee leads with rapporteur Oliver Schenk, and political agreement is targeted for the second quarter of 2027. Open questions remain on funding – no headline budget is attached, with post-2027 resources depending on the 2028–2034 Multiannual Financial Framework – as well as on talent, with 350,000 additional workers needed by 2030, on energy costs, and on the foundry gap at the most advanced nodes.

Five points GISAD recommends for the negotiations

1. A market-share target is not a strategy – a supply chain without single sources is one. The Court of Auditors‘ lesson: percentage targets without structure evaporate. GISAD recommends structure indicators instead of market share: the proportion of critical European systems running on EU chips, the number of eliminated single-source dependencies, and design sovereignty. The evaluation must measure structure, not spending.

2. Origin, measurably, in procurement. The Union added-value criteria – chips designed, manufactured or controlled in the EU – are the hardware sibling of the assurance levels in the Cloud and AI Development Act; both acts must follow the same measurement logic. A chip that runs in foreign data centres strengthens no sovereignty: Demand Accelerators and the CADA procurement levels should be interlocked so that public buyers demand EU chips in EU-controlled infrastructure.

3. The honesty rule. No region in the world controls every stage of the semiconductor value chain; selective technological sovereignty is realistic, autarky is not. GISAD recommends stating in the law which dependencies can be fully replaced and which can only be cushioned. Misallocating resources because targets are misdeclared costs time Europe does not have.

4. An open foundry that prevents gatekeepers. The flagship project is right – but only with binding access for European design houses, SMEs and research. A foundry that serves only corporate orders trades external gatekeepers for internal ones. And the Chips Skills Academy must follow a participation logic: 350,000 workers by 2030 are created through training access, not through poaching.

5. Binding funds in the Multiannual Financial Framework. Indicative post-2027 figures are not a planning basis. GISAD recommends committing the funds for the Chips for Europe Initiative 2.0 and strategic projects in the 2028–2034 MFF – otherwise the size of national budgets, not European strategy, decides the outcome.

GISAD – Global Institute for Structure relevance, Anonymity and Decentralisation · Registered in the EU Transparency Register, No. 244298340978-40

Sources: European Commission – Have your say: Chips Act 2 · European Commission – Chips Act 2.0 · Proposal COM(2026) 504 (EUR-Lex)