A new compromise from Ireland's presidency of the Council of the European Union stops the European Commission asking chip companies for data directly under Chips Act II, the revision of the EU's semiconductor law, according to Agence Europe, which reported the text on 21 October1. National authorities would run a preliminary procedure first. Member-state experts examine the text on 29 and 30 October2.
Crisis-stage requests on production capacity and disruptions would be allowed only where voluntary sharing and aggregated market data fall short, and Commission risk-mitigation measures become a last resort. Disclosure on the business-to-business semiconductor supply-chain platform turns voluntary, except for companies inside a joint European project. An SME (a small or medium-sized firm) that knowingly files false information faces fines of up to €70,0003.
the Commission sold the revision in June as the way to make sure no outside power holds a kill switch over Europe's chip supply. The Council text leaves the information that would locate such a switch with 27 national authorities. Defenders of the text can point to precedent: the €659m approved for four German chip factories in July was German state aid cleared in Brussels, and every IPCEI, the EU's scheme for jointly approved subsidy projects, is national money approved centrally. Read against this month's record, the same pattern shows in cloud tenders and recovery-funded compute.
