Lecture
The false promise of technological sovereignty: European strategy and the quest for resilience in global supply chains of semiconductors
- Date
- Wednesday 2 October 2024
- Time
- Address
-
Wijnhaven
Turfmarkt 99
2511 DP The Hague - Room
- 3.54
As the global semiconductor value chain became highly fragmented, Europe leads in some elements of the supply chain – like designing and manufacturing equipment to produce semiconductors – but depends notoriously on external actors for other elements like manufacturing and supply of advanced semiconductors. To remedy this dependency, the EU strategises and invests significantly to onshore the manufacturing of semiconductors.
This research project investigates the emblematic case of the EU’s decision to invest in a production site of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) – the world’s dominant manufacturer of advanced semiconductors – in Germany. The research project process-traces the decision-making process that led to the investment decision. It employs and original dataset of interviews conducted for this project with actors involved in the EU decision-making process.
It reveals a significant gap between on the one hand, the EU’s expectations of how much the onshoring of TSMC production on European soil aids in making the EU more technologically resilient and sovereign; and what the production site delivers. This has important implications for how scholars and policy practitioners think about the global semiconductor industry and for the EU’s pursuit of technological sovereignty, strategic autonomy, and a ‘grand strategy’ for the twenty-first century.