President Emmanuel Macron, who wanted to be at the forefront of France’s reindustrialization efforts, traveled to Isère, southeastern France, on July 12, 2022, to present the plan to expand a chip factory in Crolles. In partnership with the American company GlobalFoundries, the French-Italian group STMicroelectronics was set to invest €7.5 billion there and double its production capacity. In Germany, on June 19, 2023, the then chancellor, Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, celebrated that Germany would “become one of the world’s largest semiconductor production sites.” That same day, Intel announced plans to invest €30 billion in Magdeburg, where an industrial site was to be built, modestly named “Silicon Junction.”
All that remains of these two announcements today are memories of a time when the European Union (EU) hoped to assert itself in the fierce battle between China and the United States for control of the semiconductor industest. In Crolles, southeastern France, GlobalFoundries is nowhere to be found and the project has stalled, despite €3 billion in promised government subsidies. In Magdeburg, after fighting to secure a €10 billion contribution from Germany, Intel abandoned its European ventures to refocus its efforts across the Atlantic.
You have 88.38% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
Leave a Reply