Olaf Scholz is not known for showing emotion, but the gruesome images from Bucha seem to have struck a nerve with the chancellor. Last night, he made an appearance in response to the reports to speak of “streets littered with corpses” and “barely buried bodies”, and he announced that in the next few days, the allies would decide on further sanctions against Russia.
Does Scholz mean more than the already agreed-upon tightening of the sanctions? On Wednesday, the EU ambassadors are set to discuss the fifth package. It’s worth remembering, Germany is one of the countries that have so far rejected more far-reaching measures such as an oil embargo or the blocking of European ports for Russian ships.
Economics Minister Robert Habeck clarifies where he wants to hit the Russian energy sector instead: The gas storage facilities and oil refineries operated by Gazprom and Rosneft in Germany are to be taken out of the control of the two Kremlin corporations. The Baltic states, meanwhile, have announced that they will no longer be importing Russian natural gas, as Lithuania’s head of government Ingrida Šimonytė announced. You can read more about all this in the News.
For Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin has always been a role model in building an authoritarian system that also rewards political loyalty financially. According to projections, the last remaining Kremlin insider in the European Council was re-elected yesterday for the third time. Even with its combined forces, the opposition was unable to defeat Orbán’s dominant influence on public opinion.
In France, the re-election of President Emmanuel Macron seemed a foregone conclusion. But his far-right rival Marine Le Pen is catching up in the polls, a week before the first round of voting. Tanja Kuchenbecker analyzes why Macron also sees her as a serious threat.
I wish you a good start to the week.
Marine Le Pen has known the world of politics from an early age. At 53, the leader of the far-right Rassemblement National is closer than ever to her goal: to come to power in France. In the current presidential election campaign, she is President Emmanuel Macron’s most dangerous rival.
Macron himself warned at an election rally on Saturday that “the extremist danger is greater today than it was a few months or a few years ago”. Citizens should not believe commentators and polls that his reelection is already a foregone conclusion, he told 35,000 supporters in La Défense near Paris.
The president had made strong gains in voters’ favor after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but his lead over Le Pen is shrinking. According to the latest Ipsos poll on Saturday, she can expect 21 percent of the vote in the first round on April 10, with Macron at 26 percent. Left-winger Jean-Luc Mélenchon is in third place with 15.5 percent.
In the runoff election on April 24 between Macron and Le Pen, it would be much closer than five years ago. According to Ipsos, Macron is ahead with 53 to 47 percent. In the runoff, she could count on many voters of the far-right candidate Éric Zemmour, on anti-Macron voters and also on some of the votes for Mélenchon. Macron, on the other hand, could hope for supporters from the conservative Valérie Pécresse and the moderate left, which is not very strong.
Le Pen is avoiding previous mistakes in this election campaign, her third already. She is staying away from polemics and has removed the extreme points from her program. She presents herself as the candidate of purchasing power, one of the most important issues in the election campaign given rising prices, and as the representative of the lower classes.
It puts forward concrete proposals, such as a reduction in VAT on energy. She calls for retirement at 60 for French people who started working early, while the official retirement age is currently 62. Then there are her television appearances, in which she comes across as convincing, and her closeness to the people, which she flaunts throughout the country.
Le Pen has increasingly shed her far-right image in recent years. She renamed her party from Front National to Rassemblement National (RN) and appeared far less aggressive. It has refrained from attacks against migrants and Islam. The fascist theses of her father Jean-Marie Le Pen are taboo. She pursued a strategy of de-diabolization and thus won new voter groups in the bourgeois camp, especially among women. She describes herself as a patriot, but she no longer mentions leaving the EU and the euro as a goal.
In this election campaign, she has had to overcome a number of setbacks. At the start last September, she appeared more confident of victory than ever: “The time has come,” she said in Fréjus in southern France. But then a competitor from the far-right unexpectedly emerged. TV presenter Éric Zemmour, who had been convicted several times of “inciting racial hatred”. He initially succeeded in denying her second place and thus the runoff. But he has since fallen behind; in polls, Zemmour is only at around ten percent.
In the process, some of Le Pen’s supporters, and especially her niece Marion Maréchal, had joined Zemmour. But political veteran Le Pen only commented sarcastically: “Poor Marion is being turned into a life preserver of a campaign that is collapsing in on itself. That’s a pity, because she deserves better.”
The tide turned with the Ukraine war. Zemmour was criticized for his admiration of Russia. “I dream of a French Putin,” he said in 2018. After Russia’s Russian attack on Ukraine, he had to row back, calling it “unjustified”. Too late, he is called Vladimir Zemmour by political opponents.
Le Pen is also known for her closeness to Vladimir Putin; in 2017, she met the Russian president in Moscow and praised his “new vision” of the world. After the invasion, she then judged: “Vladimir Putin is wrong, he crossed a red line.”
Her party also got loans for previous elections from Russian banks because no one in Europe would lend it money. But her closeness to the Kremlin was less in the spotlight than Zemmour’s clear admiration for Putin. That benefited Le Pen, especially since this time she was said to have received loans from Hungary, not Russia. In the meantime, it is no longer Le Pen but Zemmour who is the bogeyman for many voters, says political expert Matthieu Croissandeau. This benefits Le Pen.
Her tactics in the election campaign also earned Le Pen points. While Zemmour and her conservative rival Valérie Pécresse held large meetings that seemed out of place in times of war in Ukraine, Marine Le Pen worked diligently like a bee. She started by getting as many interviews as possible and traveling around the country, talking to farmers, going to markets and old people’s homes. That kept her in the conversation.
And she is going all out: If she is not elected, she will not run again as a presidential candidate, she declared.
Barely 15 minutes after China’s leader Xi Jinping met with EU representatives, the Chinese side had already released the first statement with quotes: The People’s Republic hopes that Europe will formulate an independent understanding of China, maintain an independent China policy, and jointly advance stable China-EU relations, the statement said. Xi spoke about the Covid pandemic and global economic challenges. The “Ukraine crisis” was only mentioned at the end of the statement.
The early release of the statement was hardly surprising. It showed what was already clear before the 23rd EU-China summit was held on Friday. The Chinese leadership will not sway much from its position. This especially applies to the Ukraine war, which is a pressing matter for Brussels. At the virtual summit, the European Union wanted to renew pressure on Beijing over China’s controversial support for Russia – with moderate success.
The EU described the tone of the conversation as “open and frank”. EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and EU Council President Charles Michel said they found clear words and warned China against supporting Moscow. “No European citizen would understand any support to Russia’s ability to wage war,” the Commission President said after the summit. This “would lead to major reputational damage for China here in Europe.” The country would also have a special responsibility as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, von der Leyen stressed.
The EU Commission President also indirectly threatened Beijing with consequences: “It was clear that this is not only a defining moment for our continent, but it is also a defining moment for our relationship with the rest of the world,” EU Council President Michel added: “We called on China to end the war in Ukraine. China cannot turn a blind eye to Russia’s violation of international law.”
Publicly, EU leaders were much clearer about their expectations of China over sanctions against Russia: “We expect China, if not supporting the sanctions, at least to do everything not to interfere in any kind,” von der Leyen and Michel stressed in unison. According to EU officials, Xi had also been urged to speak with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
After this quick first statement from the Chinese side, it took some time on Friday before a second statement was released. In it, Xi went into more detail about Ukraine – and once again blamed the West for the conflict: He warned against “pouring fuel on the fire and fueling tensions“. The crisis had been caused by years of growing regional security tensions. “In this day and age, global and regional security frameworks should no longer be built with a Cold War mentality.”
Especially after the second statement, it was clear: The summit parties failed to approach a common response to the Ukraine invasion. “Systemic rivalry is a new reality,” Janka Oertel, Director of the Asia program at think tank ECFR, summed up the meeting. “There was little agreement between the two sides and the conversation was far from being ‘business as usual’.” Instead, it had merely been “a frank exchange of opposing views.” When it came to the position on punitive measures against Moscow, however, Brussels had clear words, Oertel said. “If China openly undermines the sanctions regime that has been imposed there will be serious consequences. This could not be clearer now.”
The G7, NATO, and EU states had already sent this message in unison to Beijing at the marathon summit a week and a half ago. Washington had a close eye on Friday’s meeting. “There is a sense in Washington that the US and the EU are currently closer than ever in their assessment of the challenge posed by China,” says foreign policy expert Noah Barkin of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund (GMF).
Friday’s summit reinforced that feeling, Barkin said. On both sides of the Atlantic, the rapprochement between China and Russia is seen as a threat. When Putin and Xi assured each other of limitless cooperation in February, perceptions had shifted forever. “That was also the message of the summit,” Barkin said. “But it’s still unclear whether the turning point proclaimed by Olaf Scholz marks a geopolitical turning point, or it only applies to Russia.” The US is now hoping for signals from Berlin that the re-evaluation in Berlin will also involve China.
Von der Leyen and Michel also spoke with Premier Li Keqiang Friday morning. China expressed its general opposition to “the division into blocs and partisanship,” Li said. The People’s Republic wishes to cooperate with the EU and the world, the Premier said. However, his country would work for peace “its own way”.
During the meeting with Li, it became clear that several differences needed to be addressed, the EU side pointed out. At the subsequent press conference, von der Leyen cited as examples the sanctions imposed by Beijing on members of the EU Parliament, the restricted access of European companies to the Chinese market, human rights issues, and China’s trade embargo against Lithuania. There was no substantive progress in resolving these differences.
Yet it is precisely in the EU-China-US triangle that China has an interest in keeping Brussels in a positive mood and thus avoiding closer ties with the US, says Thomas des Garets Geddes, Research Fellow at German think tank Merics: “The US has long been China’s most feared and despised adversary, not the EU.”
That’s why many analysts of China would agree that the EU is currently in a relatively favorable position in this triangle, the expert said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if China would be willing to do certain things for the EU to prevent it from drifting too much toward the United States.” The People’s Republic is interested in the EU’s neutrality or strategic autonomy, des Garets Geddes said. “That would be extremely important for China.” In collaboration with Christiane Kuehl
You cannot miss the skyscraper from the highway to Leuven. On the top floor of the 15-story tower, Luc Van den hove has a good view over the flat countryside. The 61-year-old is CEO of Imec (Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre), Europe’s largest research center for nano- and microelectronics. Margrethe Vestager, Vice President of the EU Commission, mentioned Imec at the presentation of the European Chips Act as an important trump card that Europe has in global competition.
Luc Van den hove welcomes the proposed legislation. The Chips Act will improve Europe’s position in the global value chain, he says. The approach is “balanced”. On the one hand, existing players in Europe would be strengthened. And on the other hand, it will encourage international companies such as Intel, Taiwan’s TSMC, or Samsung to invest in Europe.
Europe can have an important say in the production of semiconductors, says Luc Van den hove. Without the machines of the Dutch tool manufacturer ASML, hardly anyone could produce chips. Manufacturers around the world also depend on Zeiss lithography optics to expose wafers with nano-precision. The Dutch semiconductor manufacturer NXP or Infineon and Bosch from Germany are also important players.
When it comes to research, Imec is a world leader, says the CEO confidently. Imec is a non-profit organization with offices in Tawan, Japan, China, and the USA. All the big names in the industry from Asia, the US, and Europe are working together in the annex of the high-rise building on the semiconductors of the future, which are to be ever smaller, more powerful and more economical.
Women and men in white protective suits are at work behind large shop windows in clean rooms between bus-sized machines, all unique items worth a total of €3 billion. Here, research is being conducted into new technology and processes that will be used in self-driving cars, the food sector, or the healthcare sector in a few years’ time. The importance of the chips has just been demonstrated in the COVID crisis, says Van den hove. While sequencing viruses took a year not long ago, it can now be done in 24 to 28 hours.
One company cannot develop the technology alone, it has become too complex and too expensive, says the CEO. 5000 engineers and doctoral students from universities are testing and developing these machine tools, the chip structure and the processes of the future on behalf of Intel, ASML and Co. The next-generation machine is expected to be ready by 2026 at a development cost of €10 billion. By bringing together all partners from start-ups to global corporations in the ecosystem, Imec can also minimize losses, says Luc Van den hove. After the development phase, however, each company goes its own way again and then competes with its products.
With the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany or the CEA-Leti in France, there are also top researchers in other EU countries, says Van den hove. Margrethe Vestager and Thierry Breton’s Chips Act will help link the various centers in a “pan-European network”.
In the past, Germany thought in national terms, and France pursued its own plan for research in semiconductor technology. With its location in a smaller country, Imec has always been forced to take an international approach. The Chips Act is an opportunity to bring together the various strengths at the European level. It is good that Brussels is acting now.
Governments in Asia and the US are also shelling out billions. If Europe does not follow suit, the continent will be left behind, says Van den hove. The example of Imec shows that public support is important. A visionary Flemish government covered up to 60 percent of the costs in 1984 and the years after when engineers from nearby Leuven University founded the research center. Today, the bulk comes from industry. The Flemish government still contributes 16 percent, and EU programs six percent of the budget of nearly €700 million.
Why isn’t there actually a semiconductor factory next to the Imec high-rise? The research center could not compete with the partners, the model of cooperation on the neutral platform would collapse, says Luc Van den hove. Initially, there was probably also the idea in Brussels of building a European champion that would produce the latest generation of microchips. The hurdle to create a new player is extremely high, says CEO Luc Van den hove.
However, the protectionist logic of doing everything in Europe is not realistic anyway. It would be much more interesting to encourage manufacturers such as Intel, TSMC, or Samsung to invest in Europe. This would strengthen Europe’s position in the supply chain and, at the same time, also create dependencies on Europe. ASML or Imec are good examples of how Europe definitely has a chance to play a role in the technology of the future. By Stephan Israel
Olaf Scholz is not known for showing emotion, but the gruesome images from Bucha seem to have struck a nerve with the chancellor. Last night, he made an appearance in response to the reports to speak of “streets littered with corpses” and “barely buried bodies”, and he announced that in the next few days, the allies would decide on further sanctions against Russia.
Does Scholz mean more than the already agreed-upon tightening of the sanctions? On Wednesday, the EU ambassadors are set to discuss the fifth package. It’s worth remembering, Germany is one of the countries that have so far rejected more far-reaching measures such as an oil embargo or the blocking of European ports for Russian ships.
Economics Minister Robert Habeck clarifies where he wants to hit the Russian energy sector instead: The gas storage facilities and oil refineries operated by Gazprom and Rosneft in Germany are to be taken out of the control of the two Kremlin corporations. The Baltic states, meanwhile, have announced that they will no longer be importing Russian natural gas, as Lithuania’s head of government Ingrida Šimonytė announced. You can read more about all this in the News.
For Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin has always been a role model in building an authoritarian system that also rewards political loyalty financially. According to projections, the last remaining Kremlin insider in the European Council was re-elected yesterday for the third time. Even with its combined forces, the opposition was unable to defeat Orbán’s dominant influence on public opinion.
In France, the re-election of President Emmanuel Macron seemed a foregone conclusion. But his far-right rival Marine Le Pen is catching up in the polls, a week before the first round of voting. Tanja Kuchenbecker analyzes why Macron also sees her as a serious threat.
I wish you a good start to the week.
Marine Le Pen has known the world of politics from an early age. At 53, the leader of the far-right Rassemblement National is closer than ever to her goal: to come to power in France. In the current presidential election campaign, she is President Emmanuel Macron’s most dangerous rival.
Macron himself warned at an election rally on Saturday that “the extremist danger is greater today than it was a few months or a few years ago”. Citizens should not believe commentators and polls that his reelection is already a foregone conclusion, he told 35,000 supporters in La Défense near Paris.
The president had made strong gains in voters’ favor after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but his lead over Le Pen is shrinking. According to the latest Ipsos poll on Saturday, she can expect 21 percent of the vote in the first round on April 10, with Macron at 26 percent. Left-winger Jean-Luc Mélenchon is in third place with 15.5 percent.
In the runoff election on April 24 between Macron and Le Pen, it would be much closer than five years ago. According to Ipsos, Macron is ahead with 53 to 47 percent. In the runoff, she could count on many voters of the far-right candidate Éric Zemmour, on anti-Macron voters and also on some of the votes for Mélenchon. Macron, on the other hand, could hope for supporters from the conservative Valérie Pécresse and the moderate left, which is not very strong.
Le Pen is avoiding previous mistakes in this election campaign, her third already. She is staying away from polemics and has removed the extreme points from her program. She presents herself as the candidate of purchasing power, one of the most important issues in the election campaign given rising prices, and as the representative of the lower classes.
It puts forward concrete proposals, such as a reduction in VAT on energy. She calls for retirement at 60 for French people who started working early, while the official retirement age is currently 62. Then there are her television appearances, in which she comes across as convincing, and her closeness to the people, which she flaunts throughout the country.
Le Pen has increasingly shed her far-right image in recent years. She renamed her party from Front National to Rassemblement National (RN) and appeared far less aggressive. It has refrained from attacks against migrants and Islam. The fascist theses of her father Jean-Marie Le Pen are taboo. She pursued a strategy of de-diabolization and thus won new voter groups in the bourgeois camp, especially among women. She describes herself as a patriot, but she no longer mentions leaving the EU and the euro as a goal.
In this election campaign, she has had to overcome a number of setbacks. At the start last September, she appeared more confident of victory than ever: “The time has come,” she said in Fréjus in southern France. But then a competitor from the far-right unexpectedly emerged. TV presenter Éric Zemmour, who had been convicted several times of “inciting racial hatred”. He initially succeeded in denying her second place and thus the runoff. But he has since fallen behind; in polls, Zemmour is only at around ten percent.
In the process, some of Le Pen’s supporters, and especially her niece Marion Maréchal, had joined Zemmour. But political veteran Le Pen only commented sarcastically: “Poor Marion is being turned into a life preserver of a campaign that is collapsing in on itself. That’s a pity, because she deserves better.”
The tide turned with the Ukraine war. Zemmour was criticized for his admiration of Russia. “I dream of a French Putin,” he said in 2018. After Russia’s Russian attack on Ukraine, he had to row back, calling it “unjustified”. Too late, he is called Vladimir Zemmour by political opponents.
Le Pen is also known for her closeness to Vladimir Putin; in 2017, she met the Russian president in Moscow and praised his “new vision” of the world. After the invasion, she then judged: “Vladimir Putin is wrong, he crossed a red line.”
Her party also got loans for previous elections from Russian banks because no one in Europe would lend it money. But her closeness to the Kremlin was less in the spotlight than Zemmour’s clear admiration for Putin. That benefited Le Pen, especially since this time she was said to have received loans from Hungary, not Russia. In the meantime, it is no longer Le Pen but Zemmour who is the bogeyman for many voters, says political expert Matthieu Croissandeau. This benefits Le Pen.
Her tactics in the election campaign also earned Le Pen points. While Zemmour and her conservative rival Valérie Pécresse held large meetings that seemed out of place in times of war in Ukraine, Marine Le Pen worked diligently like a bee. She started by getting as many interviews as possible and traveling around the country, talking to farmers, going to markets and old people’s homes. That kept her in the conversation.
And she is going all out: If she is not elected, she will not run again as a presidential candidate, she declared.
Barely 15 minutes after China’s leader Xi Jinping met with EU representatives, the Chinese side had already released the first statement with quotes: The People’s Republic hopes that Europe will formulate an independent understanding of China, maintain an independent China policy, and jointly advance stable China-EU relations, the statement said. Xi spoke about the Covid pandemic and global economic challenges. The “Ukraine crisis” was only mentioned at the end of the statement.
The early release of the statement was hardly surprising. It showed what was already clear before the 23rd EU-China summit was held on Friday. The Chinese leadership will not sway much from its position. This especially applies to the Ukraine war, which is a pressing matter for Brussels. At the virtual summit, the European Union wanted to renew pressure on Beijing over China’s controversial support for Russia – with moderate success.
The EU described the tone of the conversation as “open and frank”. EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and EU Council President Charles Michel said they found clear words and warned China against supporting Moscow. “No European citizen would understand any support to Russia’s ability to wage war,” the Commission President said after the summit. This “would lead to major reputational damage for China here in Europe.” The country would also have a special responsibility as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, von der Leyen stressed.
The EU Commission President also indirectly threatened Beijing with consequences: “It was clear that this is not only a defining moment for our continent, but it is also a defining moment for our relationship with the rest of the world,” EU Council President Michel added: “We called on China to end the war in Ukraine. China cannot turn a blind eye to Russia’s violation of international law.”
Publicly, EU leaders were much clearer about their expectations of China over sanctions against Russia: “We expect China, if not supporting the sanctions, at least to do everything not to interfere in any kind,” von der Leyen and Michel stressed in unison. According to EU officials, Xi had also been urged to speak with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
After this quick first statement from the Chinese side, it took some time on Friday before a second statement was released. In it, Xi went into more detail about Ukraine – and once again blamed the West for the conflict: He warned against “pouring fuel on the fire and fueling tensions“. The crisis had been caused by years of growing regional security tensions. “In this day and age, global and regional security frameworks should no longer be built with a Cold War mentality.”
Especially after the second statement, it was clear: The summit parties failed to approach a common response to the Ukraine invasion. “Systemic rivalry is a new reality,” Janka Oertel, Director of the Asia program at think tank ECFR, summed up the meeting. “There was little agreement between the two sides and the conversation was far from being ‘business as usual’.” Instead, it had merely been “a frank exchange of opposing views.” When it came to the position on punitive measures against Moscow, however, Brussels had clear words, Oertel said. “If China openly undermines the sanctions regime that has been imposed there will be serious consequences. This could not be clearer now.”
The G7, NATO, and EU states had already sent this message in unison to Beijing at the marathon summit a week and a half ago. Washington had a close eye on Friday’s meeting. “There is a sense in Washington that the US and the EU are currently closer than ever in their assessment of the challenge posed by China,” says foreign policy expert Noah Barkin of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund (GMF).
Friday’s summit reinforced that feeling, Barkin said. On both sides of the Atlantic, the rapprochement between China and Russia is seen as a threat. When Putin and Xi assured each other of limitless cooperation in February, perceptions had shifted forever. “That was also the message of the summit,” Barkin said. “But it’s still unclear whether the turning point proclaimed by Olaf Scholz marks a geopolitical turning point, or it only applies to Russia.” The US is now hoping for signals from Berlin that the re-evaluation in Berlin will also involve China.
Von der Leyen and Michel also spoke with Premier Li Keqiang Friday morning. China expressed its general opposition to “the division into blocs and partisanship,” Li said. The People’s Republic wishes to cooperate with the EU and the world, the Premier said. However, his country would work for peace “its own way”.
During the meeting with Li, it became clear that several differences needed to be addressed, the EU side pointed out. At the subsequent press conference, von der Leyen cited as examples the sanctions imposed by Beijing on members of the EU Parliament, the restricted access of European companies to the Chinese market, human rights issues, and China’s trade embargo against Lithuania. There was no substantive progress in resolving these differences.
Yet it is precisely in the EU-China-US triangle that China has an interest in keeping Brussels in a positive mood and thus avoiding closer ties with the US, says Thomas des Garets Geddes, Research Fellow at German think tank Merics: “The US has long been China’s most feared and despised adversary, not the EU.”
That’s why many analysts of China would agree that the EU is currently in a relatively favorable position in this triangle, the expert said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if China would be willing to do certain things for the EU to prevent it from drifting too much toward the United States.” The People’s Republic is interested in the EU’s neutrality or strategic autonomy, des Garets Geddes said. “That would be extremely important for China.” In collaboration with Christiane Kuehl
You cannot miss the skyscraper from the highway to Leuven. On the top floor of the 15-story tower, Luc Van den hove has a good view over the flat countryside. The 61-year-old is CEO of Imec (Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre), Europe’s largest research center for nano- and microelectronics. Margrethe Vestager, Vice President of the EU Commission, mentioned Imec at the presentation of the European Chips Act as an important trump card that Europe has in global competition.
Luc Van den hove welcomes the proposed legislation. The Chips Act will improve Europe’s position in the global value chain, he says. The approach is “balanced”. On the one hand, existing players in Europe would be strengthened. And on the other hand, it will encourage international companies such as Intel, Taiwan’s TSMC, or Samsung to invest in Europe.
Europe can have an important say in the production of semiconductors, says Luc Van den hove. Without the machines of the Dutch tool manufacturer ASML, hardly anyone could produce chips. Manufacturers around the world also depend on Zeiss lithography optics to expose wafers with nano-precision. The Dutch semiconductor manufacturer NXP or Infineon and Bosch from Germany are also important players.
When it comes to research, Imec is a world leader, says the CEO confidently. Imec is a non-profit organization with offices in Tawan, Japan, China, and the USA. All the big names in the industry from Asia, the US, and Europe are working together in the annex of the high-rise building on the semiconductors of the future, which are to be ever smaller, more powerful and more economical.
Women and men in white protective suits are at work behind large shop windows in clean rooms between bus-sized machines, all unique items worth a total of €3 billion. Here, research is being conducted into new technology and processes that will be used in self-driving cars, the food sector, or the healthcare sector in a few years’ time. The importance of the chips has just been demonstrated in the COVID crisis, says Van den hove. While sequencing viruses took a year not long ago, it can now be done in 24 to 28 hours.
One company cannot develop the technology alone, it has become too complex and too expensive, says the CEO. 5000 engineers and doctoral students from universities are testing and developing these machine tools, the chip structure and the processes of the future on behalf of Intel, ASML and Co. The next-generation machine is expected to be ready by 2026 at a development cost of €10 billion. By bringing together all partners from start-ups to global corporations in the ecosystem, Imec can also minimize losses, says Luc Van den hove. After the development phase, however, each company goes its own way again and then competes with its products.
With the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany or the CEA-Leti in France, there are also top researchers in other EU countries, says Van den hove. Margrethe Vestager and Thierry Breton’s Chips Act will help link the various centers in a “pan-European network”.
In the past, Germany thought in national terms, and France pursued its own plan for research in semiconductor technology. With its location in a smaller country, Imec has always been forced to take an international approach. The Chips Act is an opportunity to bring together the various strengths at the European level. It is good that Brussels is acting now.
Governments in Asia and the US are also shelling out billions. If Europe does not follow suit, the continent will be left behind, says Van den hove. The example of Imec shows that public support is important. A visionary Flemish government covered up to 60 percent of the costs in 1984 and the years after when engineers from nearby Leuven University founded the research center. Today, the bulk comes from industry. The Flemish government still contributes 16 percent, and EU programs six percent of the budget of nearly €700 million.
Why isn’t there actually a semiconductor factory next to the Imec high-rise? The research center could not compete with the partners, the model of cooperation on the neutral platform would collapse, says Luc Van den hove. Initially, there was probably also the idea in Brussels of building a European champion that would produce the latest generation of microchips. The hurdle to create a new player is extremely high, says CEO Luc Van den hove.
However, the protectionist logic of doing everything in Europe is not realistic anyway. It would be much more interesting to encourage manufacturers such as Intel, TSMC, or Samsung to invest in Europe. This would strengthen Europe’s position in the supply chain and, at the same time, also create dependencies on Europe. ASML or Imec are good examples of how Europe definitely has a chance to play a role in the technology of the future. By Stephan Israel
