European Union internal market tsar Thierry Breton has lauded the announcement of a new €15 billion microchip factory in Dresden, Germany, as dozens of other companies leave the bloc over high operating costs.
The plant will be owned and operated by Taiwanese silicon giant TSMC, the world’s single-largest contract microchip manufacturer.
“This is the culmination of the entire industrial strategy that I have been leading for four years as European Commissioner,” Breton boasted to Luxembourg-based media outlet RTL.
“We have ensured that Europe takes back its destiny in hand and has a production capacity on European-territory microprocessors that we need.”
Breton heralded the announcement of the new factory despite the recent trend of businesses flooding out of Europe to other countries, with many fearful that the bloc is in danger of fully “de-industrialising”.
Germany, once regarded as the EU’s manufacturing heartland, has been at the epicentre of the crisis with many businesses now working to either reduce their footprint in the country or leave entirely due to a wide variety of issues, ranging from high energy prices to a shrinking labour pool.
Problems with the European energy supply have also been a major deterrent within the bloc, with numerous companies being forced to shut across the continent due to the spiralling cost of electricity and gas.
Efforts by both China and the United States to attract promising operations away from the continent have so far proven successful, with the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) especially enticing EU corporations jump ship across the Atlantic.
Under the initiative, US taxpayers are granted major tax breaks on certain goods – including cars – so long as the final step in their production is completed in North America.
“The conditions of the IRA are so attractive that Europe risks to lose the race for billions of investments that will be decided in the coming months and years,” one board member of Volkswagen recently remarked, expressing concern that the EU is now “more and more lagging behind”.
The European Union’s censorious Digital Services Act is compatible with freedom of speech, European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton has stated. https://t.co/spBwhZgL2g
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) July 28, 2023
