The European Union has courted Taiwan, a major semiconductor producer, as one of the “like-minded” partners it would like to work with under the EU chip law unveiled in February.
While Taiwan and the EU held high-level trade talks in June, less than a week after that meeting, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) said it had no concrete plans for factories in Europe.
TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker and Asia’s most valuable publicly traded company, signaled last year that it was in the early stages of reviewing a potential expansion into Germany. , but there appears to have been no substantial progress since then.
“To my knowledge, the European Commission and the Member States are discussing with some of our companies, which is a purely commercial decision which it is up to the companies to make”, declared the Taiwanese vice-minister of the economy, Chen Chern- chyi, to reporters in Taipei, in response to a question about potential investments by Taiwanese chips in Europe. However, he did not name any companies.
“From the government’s perspective, we are happy to see our businesses expanding around the world, and with our democratic allies, as long as we share the same values, we like to form a trusting partnership,” added Chen, whose portfolio covers economic relations with Europe.
Sitting next to him, Filip Grzegorzewski, the EU’s de facto ambassador to Taiwan, said he was happy to hear a government minister encouraging Taiwanese investment in Europe.
“It’s one of the highlights of my stay in Taiwan when I hear a Taiwanese government representative at a press conference encouraging Taiwanese companies to ‘go to Europe’, to invest in Europe.”