Access to semiconductors is crucial for Europe’s competitiveness, security and industrial future. The EU urgently needs chip diplomacy to better anticipate crises, adapt to the geopolitical environment and meet the competitiveness, innovation and dependency reduction goals highlighted in European strategic documents.

Against this backdrop, the project proposed by Institut Montaigne (Paris – coordinator), the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS, Bratislava – beneficiary), the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (CSDS, Brussels – beneficiary) and the EU Institute for Security Studies (EUISS, Paris and Brussels – associated partner) has been selected by the European Commission to pilot the Chips Diplomacy Support Initiative, an 18-month project co-funded by the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT).

This project aims to structure European foreign policy in the semiconductor sector. Its objective is to better anticipate and strengthen risk management for this strategic industry – covering production, access to components, supply chain diversification, and financing – while adapting industrial policy to a geopolitical environment increasingly shaped by economic coercion and the risk of war. The project’s activities will also seek to promote a more coordinated approach among stakeholders within the EU in areas such as innovation, industrial policy, and technology transfer controls. Additionally, it will work to expand expertise networks with key partners like the United States, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, as well as emerging players such as India and ASEAN countries.

As part of the Chips Diplomacy Support Initiative, CSDS will play a key role in organising two closed-door workshops on the geopolitical implications of competition for access to advanced semiconductors and a public event in Brussels in 2026. In addition, CSDS will do research on the debate between strategic autonomy and strategic indispensability in the European context, looking at both the supply and demand of advanced semiconductors.

For more information, please visit the Initiative website.

Read this VUB Tech Transfer interview with Antonio Calcara on the project.

Project Deliverables

“Strategic Autonomy or Strategic Indispensability? Identifying the EU’s Semiconductor Lodestar“, event, 26 June 2025.

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