Europe is still a leading force in manufacturing legacy chips for the automotive industry and household appliances. A May report showed that German Infineon, Dutch NXP and French-Italian STMicro are three of the five largest suppliers in the car chip market.
EU officials are now worried that subsidized Chinese firms are gunning for the bloc’s champions.
The EU’s draft survey asks leading manufacturers of low-tech chips in Europe whether an “alternative product” or “product family” from a Chinese competitor exists and what the price difference is, in percentages, between the European chips and Chinese competitors.
The survey also suggests that the EU executive is considering supporting extra chip-making capacity in Europe. It asks whether European producers would be open to a “common wafer fabrication facility” or a “common packaging facility.”
United States and EU officials have been warning of potentially unfair Chinese subsidies for legacy chips. The U.S. already launched a survey on the topic in January.
“We know there’s a massive subsidization of that industry on behalf of the Chinese government, which could lead to huge market distortion,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in April on the margins of a high-level transatlantic Trade and Technology Council (TTC) meeting between EU and U.S. officials.
