Chips Act 2.0 awaits adoption, imports account for 78 percent of chip value
The EU regulation on semiconductors is at an early stage of work, and an agreement is planned for Q2 2027. Data from the Polish Economic Institute shows how heavily the EU depends on supplies from Asia.
On 3 June 2026, the European Commission presented the draft Chips Act 2.0. It is intended to replace the 2023 semiconductor regulation. At the Competitiveness Council meeting on 24 September, ministers of the member states held a policy debate on the draft. According to the EU roadmap “One Europe, One Market”, an agreement is planned for Q2 2027.
The first Chips Act focused on production and research. According to the Commission, it helped mobilize more than EUR 52 billion in public and private investment. The new version places greater emphasis on demand for European technologies. It also provides, among other things, for a maximum of 12 months to issue permits for strategic investments in chip production.
The scale of the dependence is shown by data from the Polish Economic Institute (PIE), cited by Business Insider and PAP. Europe accounts for about 9 percent of the value of the global semiconductor market, while imports make up 78 percent of the value of circuits and components used in the EU. China produces more than 90 percent of the world’s gallium and more than 80 percent of germanium, South Korea 42 percent of memory, and the most advanced chips are manufactured almost exclusively in Taiwan. Since 2023, when Beijing restricted exports of gallium and germanium, their prices have risen, according to Business Insider, “by as much as several times”, and according to PAP, “by as much as tenfold”.
Europe has a strong position only at one stage - depositing materials on silicon wafers - thanks to the Dutch companies ASML and ASM. ASML is the only supplier of the most advanced EUV lithography machines (extreme ultraviolet), without which it is impossible to mass-produce modern circuits. ASM has more than half of the atomic layer deposition (ALD) equipment market.
Regardless of the work in Brussels, the electronics market is facing a memory shortage this year, driven, according to industry media, by demand from AI data centers. Some manufacturers, including Apple in June, raised device prices. For companies dependent on IT hardware, this means a risk of higher costs and longer delivery times, because components still mainly come from Asia.