Members of the EU have signed a joint declaration to work together on developing the semiconductor industry in Europe. The declaration aims at strengthening Europe’s capacity to develop the next generation of processor chips in order to meet the data-processing requirements for secure 5G and 6G connectivity, supercomputers, artificial intelligence and many other applications. A total 17 of the 27 members of the EU signed the agreement during an informal meeting of telecoms ministers 7 December.
While Europe has notable strengths in specific areas of the semiconductor industry, such as power electronics, RF technologies and smart sensors for embedded AI, its global share of the market is only around 10 percent of revenues. The EU states see a need to ensure the region does not become overly reliant on foreign suppliers of processors in key areas such as electronic communications, data-processing and compute tasks. Furthermore, development of the local chip industry can help contribute to wider social and environmental goals.
As a result, the countries agreed to work together to coordinate their national research initiatives and cooperate across borders and throughout the full value chain in the industry, including support for leading edge manufacturing. EU funds, building on existing initiatives in areas such as high-performance computing, will also support the research, including the pending economic recovery funds.
ePrivacy progress report
At the meeting, the ministers also discussed the European Commission's recent proposal for a Data Governance Act and the latest progress report on reforming the ePrivacy regulation. The German presidency said it wants to complete the work on the regulation in the coming weeks. In October, the EU states have agreed to a proposal from the European parliament to discuss a temporary derogation from the regulation to fight online child abuse.
In other business, the ministers discussed the negotiations with the European Parliament on the Digital Europe programme and creating a European Cybersecurity Competence Centre and a network of coordination centres. These talks are in their final stages, and the states' permanent representatives will decide 09 December on where the centre will be based.
