Taiwan talks show EU urgency on chips

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www.taipeitimes.com, Jun. 06, 2022 – 

Ministerial-level talks last week between the EU and Taiwan under a new trade and investment framework reflected the EU's urgency in gaining more stable access to the global semiconductor supply chain, economists said.

The talks between Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花) and EU Director-General for Trade Sabine Weyand on Thursday were the first under the new EU-Taiwan Trade and Investment Dialogue.

After the talks, the Bureau of Foreign Trade said in a statement that the dialogue was aimed at creating a platform to further promote bilateral trade and cooperation, most notably in the semiconductor sector.

Yen Huai-shing (顏慧欣), deputy executive director of the Taiwan WTO & RTA Center at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (中華經濟研究院), said the talks came at a time when the EU has felt vulnerable because it has little control over semiconductor manufacturing and design.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine and interruptions in logistics amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which sent ripples through the global semiconductor industry, have only increased the EU's urgency on supply chain resilience, Yen said.

"The ongoing geopolitical crisis has made the EU sense the importance of stable semiconductor supplies," Yen said. "Even weapons need chips ... so a shortage in semiconductor supplies has become an issue of national security."

She said the EU has immediate, medium-term and long-term goals, with its current priority being securing a stable supply of chips.

In the medium term, it hopes to build an information-sharing mechanism with Taiwan similar to the one between Taiwan and the US, in which the EU would provide information on shortages of key materials and orders placed with Taiwan throughout the supply chain.

The EU hopes Taiwan's semiconductor companies make further investments in Europe, Yen said.

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