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The European Commission has introduced the Chips Act 2.0, a critical update to Europe’s semiconductor strategy aimed at reinforcing technological sovereignty amid rising demands from artificial intelligence (AI), advanced computing, electrification, defense, and cloud sectors. Announced alongside the Cloud and AI Development Act and a broader digitalization roadmap, this initiative seeks to reduce Europe’s dependency on foreign suppliers and bolster its position in the global semiconductor market, projected to reach €1.37 trillion by 2030. The proposal includes measures to accelerate project permits, launch strategic “Grand Challenges” for AI-related chips, foster international alliances, enhance public procurement, and create regional centers of semiconductor excellence.
The Bankinter Innovation Foundation’s report aligns with this approach, emphasizing the need for a sustained European industrial agenda due to the semiconductor industry’s long development cycles, capital intensity, and technological complexity. The report highlights six challenges, including fragmented resources, a “valley of death” between research and production, and the need for integrating talent with industry. It proposes five priorities: turning demand into industrial commitments, focusing on areas where Europe can lead, building critical mass in clusters, bridging research and industry gaps, and treating talent as critical infrastructure. Spain, in particular, is urged to leverage these initiatives to shift from a peripheral role to an active contributor within Europe’s semiconductor ecosystem.
Ultimately, the Chips Act 2.0 represents a strategic framework that could transform Europe’s semiconductor industry, but success depends on disciplined execution and long-term commitment. Concentrating resources, maintaining clear priorities, and fostering collaboration across research, manufacturing, and talent development will be essential for Europe—and Spain—to secure competitiveness in this vital sector underpinning AI, mobility, energy, defense, and industrial innovation.
The European Commission has presented the Chips Act 2.0, a new proposal to strengthen European technological autonomy in semiconductors. We analyse its keys and its connection with the recommendations of the Bankinter Innovation Foundation's report on critical capabilities for European competitiveness.
The European Commission has presented the new Chips Act 2.0, a proposal that reinforces the European semiconductor strategy at a decisive moment: artificial intelligence, advanced computing, electrification, defense and the cloud are turning chips into critical infrastructure. The announcement confirms a central thesis of the Bankinter Innovation Foundation’s report, Semiconductors: Critical Capabilities for European Competitiveness: Europe Needs More Investment and a Sustained, Selective and Executable Industrial Agenda.
On 3 June 2026, the European Commission presented a technological sovereignty package that includes two legislative proposals – the Chips Act 2.0 and the Cloud and AI Development Act – along with a European open-source strategy and a roadmap for digitalisation and artificial intelligence in energy. The stated aim is to strengthen Europe’s digital autonomy and reduce structural dependencies on essential technologies.
Why semiconductors are a critical infrastructure for Europe
The new Chips Act 2.0 is based on a clear observation: although the original Chips Act, in force since 2023, helped to mobilise more than 52,000 million euros of public and private investment and create an estimated 46,000 direct and indirect jobs, Europe remains dependent on third countries in critical areas such as advanced manufacturing and chip design.
The urgency has multiplied with artificial intelligence. According to the Commission, the global semiconductor market could reach €1.37 trillion by 2030, with AI-related components driving around 70% of the growth. That’s why Chips Act 2.0 is more than just a sectoral industrial policy: it’s a centerpiece of the European strategy to compete in AI, cloud, connected vehicles, industrial robotics, defense, energy, and data centers.
The main measures of the Chips Act 2.0
The proposal introduces several lines of action: accelerating permits with a maximum term of 12 months, launching “Grand Challenges” for strategic chips such as AI, creating international alliances in semiconductors, strengthening innovative public procurement, activating “Demand Accelerators” to connect manufacturers with user industries, facilitating State aid for “first-of-a-kind” projects throughout the value chain and creating a label of Regions of Excellence in Semiconductors.
The direction is relevant and coincides with one of the most important ideas in the Bankinter Innovation Foundation report: the semiconductor industry demands a European response, not a purely national one. Its scale, capital intensity, technological complexity and dependence on global chains make a fragmented approach insufficient.
The six structural challenges of the European semiconductor industry
The Foundation’s report identifies six underlying messages that fit directly with the spirit of the Chips Act 2.0. First, that semiconductors operate with horizons of 10 to 20 years, so they require institutional stability and sustained financing. Second, that Europe is a large market – automotive, industry, energy, health and defence – but that consumption rarely translates into stable industrial commitments. Third, that the European scientific base is solid, albeit fragmented. Fourth, that global competition forces us to reduce the dispersion of resources. Fifth, that the “valley of death” between research, industrial validation and production persists. And sixth, that Europe generates quality talent, but it must better connect it with industry.
From this perspective, the Chips Act 2.0 is right to shift the focus from mere financing to the execution architecture. In semiconductors, announcing funds is not enough. Competitiveness is decided by the ability to convert demand into contracts, research into product, talent into productive capacity and clusters dispersed in industrial poles with critical mass.
Five priorities to strengthen the European semiconductor ecosystem
The Bankinter Innovation Foundation proposes five priorities that offer a roadmap for interpreting the new European framework. The first is to turn demand into industrial commitment: Europe must use its power as a market to generate multi-year contracts, sectoral aggregation and strategic public procurement. This priority is directly linked to the “Demand Accelerators” and innovative public procurement planned by the Commission.
The second priority is to compete where Europe can lead. It is not a question of trying to win in all segments of the value chain, but of concentrating resources in areas where Europe already has advantages or can capture new technological windows: power electronics, integrated photonics, advanced packaging, new materials, chiplets, open architectures and AI-powered hardware-software co-design.
The third is to build industrial clusters with critical mass. Here the Chips Act 2.0 introduces an interesting tool: the Semiconductor Regions of Excellence label. But the challenge will be to prevent it from becoming a race of territorial dispersion. International experience shows that clusters are not decreed: they are consolidated where there is infrastructure, tractor companies, engineering, talent, capital and continuity. The MIT report on the implementation of the US CHIPS Act warns precisely that governments can strengthen promising clusters, but hardly create them from scratch without real industrial links.
The fourth priority is to cross the valley of death between laboratory and industry. Europe has world-class science, technology hubs, and universities, but it needs more prototyping platforms, lab-to-fab validation environments, design capabilities for manufacturing, and patient funding for hardware deep-tech scaleups. This is one of the least visible and most decisive keys: without technological maturation infrastructure, European research will continue to feed foreign value chains.
The fifth priority is to treat talent as critical infrastructure. There will be no technological sovereignty without engineers, technicians, operators, designers, specialists in EDA, packaging, materials, photonics, power and advanced manufacturing. The Chips Act 2.0 talks about strengthening capacities and competencies; the Foundation’s report specifies the challenge: connecting universities, research centres and companies, reforming academic incentives and sustaining ecosystems capable of attracting, training and retaining talent.
Spain before the Chips Act 2.0: an opportunity to gain strategic relevance
The Spanish dimension is especially relevant. The Spain 2025 document, Towards a New Semiconductors European Strategy, aligned with the recommendations of the Draghi report, argues that if Europe needs a new semiconductor strategy, Spain must also relaunch its own, with more funding, coordination and speed in public-private collaboration. This approach fits in with the opportunity opened up by the Chips Act 2.0: Spain must position itself not as a peripheral player, but as an active part of the areas where Europe can specialise.
In this context, it is worth highlighting the role of the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT) as one of the most relevant advances in recent Spanish technology policy, responding to a need that the ecosystem has been pointing out for years: to move from fragmented calls to a more agile public capacity to accompany long-term technological projects.
The first moves point to a more active industrial policy, in line with what the new Chips Act 2.0 requires of the Member States: less dispersion, more focus and greater capacity for implementation.
From strategy to implementation: the real challenge for Europe
The conclusion of the Bankinter Innovation Foundation report sums up the challenge well: Europe has sufficient assets to gain weight in the global semiconductor industry; The decisive thing is to concentrate them better, to maintain clear priorities and to translate them into industrial results.
The Chips Act 2.0 may be the framework for achieving this. But it will only work if Europe – and Spain within Europe – moves from ambition to the discipline of execution. In semiconductors, competing is about building, over years, the critical capabilities that will make European competitiveness possible.
Download the report “Semiconductors: critical capabilities for European competitiveness“ to learn about the recommendations of the Bankinter Innovation Foundation and understand how Europe can strengthen its position in a key industry for artificial intelligence, mobility, energy, defence and industrial competitiveness.
