The Chips Act 2.0 asks Europe to build a semiconductor industry that customers actually buy from, yet the legislation itself carries almost no new money. Four months after the Commission presented the proposal on 3 June 2026 as part of its Technology Sovereignty Package, industry groups are pressing governments to settle the funding question before the text moves far in Parliament and Council.
The case for action rests on a simple imbalance. Europe makes less than a tenth of the world’s chips but consumes about a fifth of them, according to industry estimates published this month. The Commission expects the global market to reach €1.37 trillion by 2030, with AI-related components driving about 70 percent of that growth.
The first Chips Act mobilised more than €52 billion in public and private investment and created an estimated 46,000 direct and indirect jobs. Industry voices argue that it concentrated on factories while demand for European chips stayed weak. The Chips Act 2.0 tries to correct that with Demand Accelerators that link chipmakers to industrial buyers, Grand Challenges for strategic technologies such as AI chips, and wider use of innovation procurement.
On the supply side, the proposal extends first-of-a-kind status, which unlocks State aid and faster permits, to the whole value chain from raw materials to packaging. Permitting would be capped at 12 months. Strategic projects could open EU funding alongside national and private investment, and a new Semiconductor Regions of Excellence label is meant to help regional clusters attract capital.
The money is the weak point. The regulation leaves funding to the 2028-2034 EU budget and the European Competitiveness Fund, both still under negotiation. The Commission’s own impact assessment concedes that benefits would be more subdued without a much bigger budget, and it models an example investment of €40 billion for large cross-border projects.
Industry wants a ring-fenced semiconductor budget of €30 billion to €60 billion, drawn from all four technology windows of the Competitiveness Fund. Technology Industries of Finland, which published its argument on 19 October, also wants the Chips Act 2.0 and the budget negotiated as one package. Its authors warn that a law without a funding line invites the same gap between ambition and delivery that the first Act exposed.
Other disputes are already visible. Industry fears that new security-of-supply duties, such as procurement declarations, could weigh heavily on firms outside risk-prone sectors, and it wants mandatory dual sourcing reserved for exceptional cases. It also wants rules that keep companies with partner-country owners eligible and let trusted non-EU firms join the Industrial Alliance for Semiconductors, which would gain formal status but meet the European Semiconductor Board only once a year.
The next test comes in the ordinary legislative procedure, where Parliament and Council must agree their positions before talks can start. Whether the Chips Act 2.0 changes anything will depend less on its permitting deadlines than on the budget deal that follows. For now, European chipmakers have a plan, a label and a faster permit, and they are still waiting to learn how much the Chips Act 2.0 will actually pay for.
