IN Brief:
- SEMI’s June 3 policy forum in Brussels will focus on the case for a broader European Chips Act 2.0.
- The agenda centres on supply-chain resilience, competitiveness, workforce, and industrial coordination across the semiconductor value chain.
- Europe’s next phase will be judged less by announcements and more by its ability to connect design, production, materials, equipment, skills, and long-term policy.
SEMI is putting Europe’s semiconductor strategy back under the spotlight ahead of its June 3 policy forum in Brussels, where industry and policymakers are set to examine what a second phase of regional chip policy should look like as geopolitical pressure, supply-chain risk, and competitiveness concerns continue to build.
The event comes with a clear emphasis on what many in the sector are already calling a Chips Act 2.0 agenda. The first round of European semiconductor policy helped push investment, visibility, and political attention back toward the industry. The harder task now is deciding what happens after the initial burst of fab headlines. Europe has to address the gaps that remain across design capability, advanced packaging, equipment, materials, workforce development, and the coordination required to make the whole value chain more resilient.
SEMI’s Brussels forum is framed around exactly that problem. The programme is set to cover the next chapter of the Chips Act, industrial competitiveness, workforce development, and the balance between European resilience and global partnership. That matters because the semiconductor sector is no longer dealing with supply security as a background issue. It has moved to the centre of industrial planning, with governments increasingly treating chips not only as commercial products but as strategic infrastructure.
Europe’s position remains mixed. It has strengths in equipment, power electronics, automotive semiconductors, specialty processes, research depth, and parts of the industrial supply chain. Yet it still faces structural weaknesses in leading-edge manufacturing scale, packaging depth, and the ability to convert scientific capability into a more integrated industrial system. The question in Brussels is therefore not simply whether Europe should invest more. It is whether policy can become more coherent across the different layers that turn semiconductor ambition into delivered capacity.
The forum’s timing is also significant. Semiconductor strategy is being reshaped by export controls, subsidy competition, energy-price uncertainty, and the growing importance of AI hardware. In that environment, a narrow policy focused only on wafer fabs looks increasingly incomplete. Europe needs design capability, talent, chemicals and materials resilience, equipment continuity, and stronger links between research, pilot lines, and volume production. It also needs a framework that recognises the different requirements of logic, power, analogue, compound semiconductors, and the downstream manufacturing base that depends on them.
That broader view is evident in the event agenda. Alongside the next chapter of the Chips Act, the programme turns toward sustainable competitiveness, workforce development, and global partnerships. Those are not secondary topics. Skills shortages already constrain growth across the semiconductor chain, while sustainability and energy cost remain serious factors in where manufacturing is expanded. Partnerships matter too, because no region can build a full sovereign supply chain in every layer of the market without cost and duplication becoming unmanageable.
The industrial mood has shifted noticeably over the past two years. Early semiconductor policy debates often revolved around headline capital expenditure and national prestige. The more grounded question now is whether Europe can build a system that is investable, connected, and durable. That means less attention to ribbon-cutting and more attention to permitting, utilities, skills pipelines, cluster development, and how smaller specialist companies interact with large strategic programmes.
For electronics companies operating in Europe, the outcome of that debate will influence far more than symbolism. It will shape where future capacity is built, how R&D priorities are aligned, what support frameworks are available for suppliers, and how resilient the region becomes when the next disruption arrives. It will also determine whether Europe’s role in semiconductors remains concentrated in important but partial strengths, or broadens into a more complete industrial proposition.
The discussion in Brussels will not settle that question on its own. It will, however, show how far the policy conversation has moved. The next phase of Europe’s chip strategy is no longer only about attracting fabs. It is about whether the region can assemble the rest of the ecosystem around them with enough speed and seriousness to matter.
