India key EU chip partner: European Commission VP

India is a very important partner for the European Union in the semiconductor sector as the bloc seeks to work with trusted partners to strengthen its chip supply chains and build its own capacity, a senior European Commission leader said.

Speaking at a joint press conference after the third India-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC) meeting in Brussels, European Commission Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna Virkkunen said India is an important partner for semiconductor research and development because of its vast pool of highly skilled talent.

“With semiconductors, we see that India is a very important partner for the European Union. Our Chips 2.0 was adopted in June. We are especially focusing on improving the resilience of our supply chains. We want to build up our own capacity in the European Union, but we also want to work with our trusted partners,” she said.

Describing the semiconductor industry as global with long and vulnerable supply chains, Virkkunen said it was important to diversify sources and reduce dependence on any single supplier.

“It’s important to build better resilience for these supply chains to make sure that we are not dependent on one source... That we have alternatives and we have our own capacity.

“When it comes to research and development of new chips, of course, India is a very important partner for us because it has a very large pool of highly skilled talent,” she said.

Virkkunen was responding to a question on outcomes of the AI Impact Summit hosted by India and the launch of the Indian government’s Semicon 2.0 programme aimed at strengthening the country’s semiconductor ecosystem.

Calling the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi a success, she congratulated India for hosting the event.

“It was the first time discussions focused on ensuring that everyone has access to these technologies because AI is a crucial, critical technology of the future,” she said.

Her remarks came about a month after the CEO of US-based AI safety and research company Anthropic, Dario Amodei, described the New Delhi summit as “extremely disorganised”.

Virkkunen said the EU shares India’s vision of making AI technologies accessible while ensuring that they are trustworthy and benefit economies, societies and citizens.

“I think this is something that we very much share with India... we want to have technologies that benefit our economies, societies, and population. Our citizens should be able to trust these technologies, and we are doing this in a sustainable manner,” she said.

A joint statement issued after the TTC meeting said India and the EU agreed to deepen cooperation in semiconductors, high-performance computing, quantum technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) and 6G.

Minister of State for Electronics and IT Jitin Prasada said the Union Cabinet has approved the Semicon 2.0 programme with an outlay of about USD 13.25 billion.

He said the programme will focus on chip design, semiconductor equipment and materials, research and development, chemicals and gases essential for chip manufacturing, and setting up more fabrication units.

“More manufacturing will come to India, further strengthening our ATMP and OSAT packaging networks. R&D in semiconductors and talent development will also be major thrust areas under the India Semiconductor Mission 2.0 (Semicon 2.0),” Prasada said.