With six weeks before the end of its EU Council presidency, Prague is trying to set the outstanding differences among member states in the European chip legislation by reducing the budget by €400 million and opening up funding allocation to different contractual arrangements.
Last Friday (21 November), the Czech presidency of the Council circulated a new compromise text on the Chips Act, seen by EURACTIV. This legislation is intended to boost Europe’s semiconductor capacity and empower the European Commission to undertake emergency measures during supply chain crises.
The text is on the agenda of Wednesday’s Committee of Permanent Representatives meeting. The EU ambassadors’ endorsement is required before the text can receive ministerial approval at the Competitiveness Council on 1 December.
It is still unclear if the Czech presidency has a majority for its text, as Germany, Spain, Poland, Romania, Greece, and Slovakia have invoked ‘scrutiny reservation’, a technical expression to say that their position is being discussed internally among the concerned ministries.
Budget
At an ambassador meeting on 4 November, the issue of how to fund the Chips Act proved one of the most controversial topics, as the EU budget is already constrained, and the initiative was not accounted for when it was put in place.
At the same time, what the European Commission put on the table hardly matches the massive investments that economic powerhouses like China and the United States are undertaking in this sector – a mismatch between ambitions and resources that the new text makes even starker.
Notably, the Czechs proposed not to include relocation of funding from Horizon Europe, the EU’s flagship research programme, resulting in a reduction of €400 million in funding that was supposed to be channelled via the Digital Europe Programme.
Moreover, the text clarifies that the €1.25 billion made available under Digital Europe will finance capacity-building activities, while Horizon Europe’s €1.65 billion is committed to research and innovation.
A draft Council statement has been included as an annexe inviting the Commission to support the Council’s efforts to maintain the initiative’s budget at the planned €3.3 billion, by exploring alternative funding solutions to be discussed in the upcoming budgetary negotiations.
Consortia
The other topic that remains politically sensitive in this phase of the negotiations relates to the European Chips Infrastructure Consortium, settings intended to facilitate access to EU funding.
However, several member states did not see the need for creating a new framework on top of the traditional research consortia and complained that these arrangements usually favour the most prominent member states in a better position to lead on these projects.
While the Czech presidency stressed that there was still a majority of countries supporting the inclusion of ECICs in the proposal, as a compromise, it amended the text to clarify that the allocation of funding should not be based on the specific legal form of cooperation, meaning that other arrangements should also be possible.
In terms of openness, the compromise states that “member states, in particular, should be able to join an ECIC at any time either as full members or observers, whereas other public or private legal entities should be able to join at any time on fair and reasonable terms specified in the Statutes”.
“The Public Authorities Board of the Chips Joint Undertaking should be able to verify the openness of an ECIC and request remedial measures to be taken where necessary,” the Council presidency added.
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]
