Paris, March 24, 2022 – The Covid-19 pandemic had unveiled the fragilities of global supply chains. The return of war in Europe now underlines the crucial importance of geopolitics for the resilience of our economies: with its procurement of foreign semiconductor technology being targeted by sanctions, Russia could retaliate by cutting access to neon gases and palladium, raising again the question of Europe’s supplies.

Institut Montaigne has just published two policy papers authored by Mathieu Duchâtel, director of the Institute’s Asia Program. Each of them dives into one of the two sides of the same coin, i.e. the efforts undertaken by the EU to hold its own in the global tech competition: the “promote” side and the “protect”.  

Europe is indeed taking both a so-called offensive approach aimed at supporting the strengths of its semiconductor industry, its competitiveness and its innovative capacity–marking the revival of industrial policy–and a defensive approach designed to prevent forced or intangible technology transfers and thus moderate China’s drive for European technology acquisition. Taken together, the two policy papers shed light on these two powerful policy levers. Mathieu Duchâtel puts forward concrete policy recommendations made to the European Commission and the EU Member States and based on an in-depth analysis of the EU’s existing policy tools, on research interviews conducted with key officials and industry representatives and on a comparative analysis of the policy path taken by other players. 

“The EU has recently become more aware of the need for new policy instruments when it comes to its technology landscape. This is undeniably a welcome move, but it is now time to take this new logic further. Europe will benefit from fine-tuning its existing policy tools while learning from good practices in place abroad and accepting to cooperate with allies and friends where acting alone proves to be fruitless.”, Mathieu Duchâtel, director of Institut Montaigne’s Asia Program.