22-23 October 2025
Singapore
17:15 – 17:25
Navigating Public Funding Opportunities for Europe’s Semiconductor Industry
The microelectronics industry, with its multiple applications across sectors including automotive, defense, health, energy and digital, is considered strategic in Europe. It is the focus of many public funding opportunities. The European semiconductor industry faces fierce competition at global scale. Europe has a strategic positioning in terms of innovation capacity, but factories tend to be located elsewhere due to a less favorable cost structure and massive public support in Asia. This is especially true for wafer production and front-end manufacturing, where the required investments are huge and increase with the performance of the most advanced chips. The European semiconductor ecosystem benefited from significant public funding in 2018 and 2023 through the IPCEI on Microelectronics (€1.9 billion for 43 projects in 4 Member States plus the United Kingdom) and the IPCEI ME/CT (€8.1 billion for 68 projects in 14 Member States) aimed at bolstering the European technological leadership, transforming it into market opportunities, and coordinating innovating players at all levels of the value chain. In addition, in 2022, the European Commission launched the European Chips Act, which facilitates the funding of first-of-a-kind microelectronic gigafactories in Europe, in order to strengthen the resilience of European industry with regards to these key enabling technologies. european economics has supported 34 projects in the microelectronics industry as part of these initiatives and has contributed in securing a total of €11.7 billion for its clients (wafer manufacturers, IDMs and foundries).
Marc Isabelle, Ph.D.
european economics
Marc ISABELLE, engineer & PhD in Economics, is the founder and CEO of european economics.
Marc is a recognised expert in the public funding of strategic projects. Since 2009, he has helped 195 companies secure €41 billion in public funding for 246 major projects. These initiatives tackle key societal challenges – including disruptive innovation, decarbonisation, resilience and infrastructure – across a wide range of industrial sectors including microelectronics, software, telecoms, automotive, energy and environment, batteries, pharmaceuticals and biotech.
Through his extensive work with the European Commission and national authorities, Marc has actively contributed to shaping the methodologies and best practices used to assess public funding applications and their compatibility with EU regulations.
european economics
Company Profile
Founded in 2009, european economics is a recognised pure-player consultancy specialising in public funding. We deliver tailored, high value-added services across Europe to support our clients in designing and implementing turnkey public funding strategies – State aid and European funding – for their most strategic projects:
• €41 billion in public funding secured for 246 projects, including €5.8 billion in 2024,
• 100% success rate for State aid notifications to the European Commission.
Company Products & Services
We support our clients with a turn-key approach at every step of their project’s life-cycle: funding strategy definition, application file preparation (at National and EU level), European Commission validation process, and funding monitoring.