>the process is long and arduous and the risks are huge.
Plenty of 28nm+ chips Fabs are inside EU. And more are coming online. This isn't a long or arduous process.
Edit: Should have been Plenty of 28nm and above. As the original quote state.
Which are those "plenty" sub-28nm fabs exactly?
AFAIK only Global Foundries Dresden goes down to 22nm and 12nm, and I think that's by far the most cutting edge fab currently in EU, making the Ryzen IO dies and other such things.
But even TSMC's future Dresden fab starting construction next year(hopefully) will start making mostly automotive chips for NXP, Bosch and Infineon chips at 28nm and 22nm all the way in 2027(!), with plans to go to 16nm and 12nm in the further future.
Your view on EU cutting edge semi fabrication seems very optimistic.
Well well, how the turn-tables.
If European countries wanted the tech bad enough, they would find ways to get it. The problem is not the know-how but the massive investments needed to productize it.
EU is turning back towards Austerity 2.0: Electric Saveroo these days.
Are you telling me the EU, the richest block in the world, has less money to spend on fabs than TSMC, as if the EU is scrapping for change behind the couch cushions.
If only you knew how much money the EU wastes through various useless and vanity projects that accomplish nothing except getting certain well connected people rich, we could have built 3x TSMCs.
But unlike Taiwan, we're lacking in visionary well educated tech leaders, and drowning in clueless politicians and established gentrified industry players who lobby the funds go to their projects instead.
To me it just seems like relying on government funding to drive innovation in sectors where private companies have incentives to compete is extremely foolish.
That could very well turn out to be the case in practice, not for lack of money, but inability to provide the promised subsidies according to Financial Times:
https://www.ft.com/content/898454ba-8fc2-4b00-a14f-5f9ee152d...
I didn't say we don't have the money, but that it's a problem to commit the money. It's basically the norm that EU countries unanimously agree that "something should be done" on a certain issue, but then disagree on how much it should cost and where the money should come from. This gets more and more complicated the bigger the cost is (and this is an expensive idea) and the farther we are from the regular 7-year-budget process (it was last agreed in 2020, so jockeying for big items will probably resume in 2025-26).
I don't disagree on the overall lack of vision in European political classes (hardly a fault of the EU, it's common to basically all countries and all levels of government), but even a visionary leader would have to work hard to get agreement on such a big project.
It's a question of supply chains - not tech.