But luckily Germany saved the world by shutting down their power plants for good

Tinfoil hat, I know, but I'm convinced that Germany hating nuclear power was a Russian influence operation.

Maybe... but let's not forget the 1986 event.

And we mustn't compare it with the ecological impact of using gas in a democracy instead of nuclear under a communist regime

Sure, but it had a catastrophic impact on the german opinion.

It was already decided in 1998 to phase out nuclear power under the SPD–Green coalition. They passed the Nuclear Exit Law in 2002.

It’s mostly the Green Party’s fault, as they have been vehemently anti-nuclear since their inception(1970s).

Ok. Soviet influence operation.

I always wonder how western population is so brainwashed that you always explain everything using two mutually exclusive ideas:

1. "Russia is insignificant infinitely small nothing. It's economy is less than economy of Texas!"

2. "Putin and russians are controlling all the world. They bought every world leader, everyone from Trump to Xi is controlled by them! Anything bad that happens in the world from USA to Africa is directly staged by Russia!"

There is nothing contradictory about a country that is a relative shithole having a very effective propaganda machine. Russia puts a lot of their resources into foreign propaganda, and it shows. It is still a shithole when it comes to economy and standard of living.

IMHO, democratic countries should do the same. I want pro-Western, democratic, liberal propaganda bots to flood the internet, just like the Russian ones do. But I guess liberal governments are just too good to use the same weapons. It could be their downfall.

It does not need to be 100% Russia operation. Some people did actually want nuclear shutdown (greens), Russia then just needs to help a little (in completely unrelated Mr. Gerhard S. has comfy chair at Rosneft)

Yeah, that's exactly when all the semiconductor industry left Germany! And why France - the only country that's close to fully nuclear - is the industrial power house of the world. Stay shallow, HN.

France the industrial power house of the world? No.

It does well for itself and Europe but there are several US states that have a larger GDP and industrial output than France does.

That's the point. France has 70%+ nuclear energy in the mix, but isn't the economic miracle that nuclear power is supposed to bring.

China's CAS institute charts DUV route to 3nm GAA without EUV - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49757999 - September 2026

So far, however, the law has done little to spur the construction of new semiconductor factories in Europe. The European Court of Auditors concluded last year that the EU is unlikely to achieve its goal of doubling Europe’s share of the global chip market by 2030.

They should make another law and probably a few more commissions of auditors.

I get the sarcasm, but its not like e.g. TSMC popped up in a environment of pure libertarian free market capitalism. It was, from the beginning, a project of the Taiwanese state, and without significant public influence there is no way it would have become what it is. Are the EU laws what's needed? IDK. But without a proper public industrial policy besides "low taxes and few regulations" there is no way Europe will be able to get significant semiconductor-production up, the rich-get-richer phenomenon is just to strong.

I think the point is that laws alone mean nothing. As you note, Taiwan was more active than just having commissions and signing papers.

Airbus proves the EU can do this. It remains to be seen if they still have the ability to take constructive action, or if “add more bureaucracy” is the only tool remaining in the toolbox.

I’ve seen someone explaining why it’s not as easy with semiconductors: Airbus can spread several different factories for different components around the EU. For semiconductors that’s not as feasible. Thus countries would fight which one would have the semiconductors factory. I think it was more or less this argument, which seems to make sense.

Another interesting fact is that Che-Chia Wei (the man who made TSMC what it is) received zero equity. Everything he has he bought himself at the market rate.

Don't you mean Morris Chang/張忠謀? He was the founder. Also, this near-meme level phrase "received zero equity" is meaningless when you are paying senior executives millions per year. They just buy shares with their earnings. He was one of the highest (if not highest) paid executive in Taiwan for more than a decade.

Untrue. TSMC is just building a state of the art chip factory in Dresden, and they are certainly using ASML.

That fab unfortunately seems to be quite far from state of the art at 12 nm feature size. Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Semiconductor_Manufac...

Uh, so they are lying to us constantly. First the said the new BOSCH fab in Dresden is for AI, with 28nm - ha!

Can you share any official communication where somebody claimed this fab was for AI?

It was pretty clear that this fab - much like the other Bosch facilities - is going to be for automotive and industry ICs, not for high end node sizes in CPUs or GPUs.

I think I've read "power management chips for AI" somewhere. Probably technically correct, but also a somewhat gratuitous reference to the current thing for silly PR reasons.

The fab itself can still be "state of the art" even when the product isn't (Germany needs chips for its industry, not for gaming PCs or AI data centers).

There will be 2nm in Ireland

Are you talking about Intel? That's the 7nm class and I've never seen anything about plans for the 20A/2nm generation at that fab.

Current state of the art in feature sizes is 20 nm metal pitch / 45 nm gate pitch.

We both know that feature sizes became marketing names over a decade ago. The "12 nm" for that fab are of course the marketing name. In any case, it's a seriously old process at this point.

No, ASML is not lying about ASML's business developments.

Untrue

So you seem to know more about ASML's business than the ASML executive quoted in this article.

Yes, so TSMC is buying the machines, and they are based in Taiwan. This is not about the physical location of the machines.

Most of their fabs are also in Taiwan.

So currently europe is exposed to russia-ukraine, us-iran, and shortly china-taiwan. This is not a great place to be in.

It more due to the fact that the politicians are on a moral kow-it-all high horse than being pragmatic and putting national interest first. As an example all EU leaders absolutely refused to talk with Russia/Putin on putting an end to the war and they were hell bent on militarily defeating Russia. I remember the previous German Chancellor had a phone call with Putin to discuss it and everyone was shitting on him for doing that.

But now Trump is inviting Putin to G20 and I'm sure sure all those EU politician would be all smily and act like no war is going on and gladly talk with Putin. If you think about it the war could have ended years ago and all the Ukranian/Russian lives lost could have been avoided if EU leaders were not so arrogant.

That's a weird stance to take. If someone invaded a other territory next to yours and some of your unions members fear they're next, business as usual is the wrong strategy, imo

That's why diplomacy is important. There is no scenario that Europe, let alone Ukraine can militarily defeat Russia (a country with nuclear weapons). I understand defending the territory. But what is the end game? fight forever? or mutual destruction?

Kick them out so they gain nothing and have a credible enough deterrent they don't try again. This is also well below the stated threshold for Russia escalating to nukes but well above the threshold of military defeat.

what if they cannot be kicked out? fight forever till Ukraine runs out of men to send to war?

Sorry this is a crazy interpretation of events.

Europe has 15x the GDP of Russia. If they were "hell bent" on militarily defeating Russia, they could have made even tiny sacrifices to the social welfare system, diverted industrial production to military aid, and drowned Ukraine in help. That was a very achievable goal, and they didn't do it.

Instead, the vacillated on importing US natural gas, continued shutting down nuclear power plants, and paid Russia MORE CASH FOR OIL than they ended up giving Ukraine in military aid! They did not in fact, dedicate themselves to this war in any way shape or form.

they could have made even tiny sacrifices to the social welfare system, diverted industrial production to military aid, and drowned Ukraine in help. That was a very achievable goal, and they didn't do it.

We already did that. Welfare and funding to social services, elderly care, etc is significantly reduced and with higher bar to get than before 2022 where I live. Plus we're also paying the price in higher housing costs thanks to housing millions of Ukrainians.

It's easy to want a higher reduction on welfare services when you're not the one needing them. It's easy to write cheques that other people have to cash.

Welfare and funding to social services, elderly care, etc is significantly reduced and with higher bar to get than before 2022 where I live.

Same here! I'd actually say it's basically shut down to new people.

I have spoken to 5 different health/government departments just trying to get some care for my elderly family member who lives alone and has badly hurt both legs, but I have been denied, denied and denied and lied to at every single stage. "We have no money", "Go private", "We are at capacity", "There is a 16 week wait for an assessment", "You can only access us via your GP" [lie]

All because they aren't retirement age yet - then they get more red carpet treatment.

The Government is also busy trying to figure out how to cut welfare for those who don't vote in sufficient numbers to matter

All because they aren't retirement age yet

Have you told them to jump on a small inflatable boat, throw away their passports and enter the EU via the Mediterranean? They'll get first class treatment for all their needs on the taxpayers' dime. Because if they don't get it, there's a dozen NGOs paid from your taxes that will sue their government for breaking their human rights for not providing them with the housing and care they need.

Are you for real? Look into France's pension situation. The median pensioner has HIGHER INCOME than the median working adult. And retirement was at 62!

No, there have been absolutely no real cuts to elderly care, the UK's triple lock ensures that the situation gets monotonically worse until the system collapses.

Are you for real?

YES.

I don't live in France or the UK.

No, there have been absolutely no real cuts to elderly care

Yeah they have. My city is short 30 million Euros on disability care this year despite increases in taxes. I (non retiree) now need to wait 6+ months for a surgery when it used to be 2, and pay from my taxes for money and weapons to Ukraine and housing to Ukrainian refugees in my city while they have nicer cars than me and don't pay the back breaking car taxes because they leave them on UA plates. I don't necessarily mind that per se, but I do mind being berated as if I'm not sacrificing enough. Please set an example and sacrifice yourself and your family for Ukraine before lecturing us.

If they were "hell bent" on militarily defeating Russia, they could have made even tiny sacrifices to the social welfare system, diverted industrial production to military aid, and drowned Ukraine in help

Why do you think an entire continent with multiple and (sometimes even conflicting with each other) culture, priorities, national interest would do that? EU is an economic union. Not a federation like US

Because NATO article 5 demands it.

European support started out slow, but has ramped up as the US has backed away.

Germany will spend 20% of it's federal budget on military in 2027, planning to increase that to 30% by 2030. "We cannot defend ourselves against Putin with a balanced budget".

What does NATO article 5 have to do with Ukraine?

The parent was talking about the disunity of Europe in standing up to Putin.

What would come next after Ukraine may be the Baltic states or Poland.

What would come next after Ukraine may be the Baltic states or Poland.

According to your YouTube sources? NATO has nothing to do with Ukraine. NATO countries can defend themselves if one of those countries actually are being attacked. That happened in 9/11 and NATO countries supporting militarily the US wars that preceded.

They have no such obligation towards Ukraine.

Europe has been stepping up a lot recently, given Trump's reluctance to push back against Putin - looks at UK/France supply of missile and anti-missile systems and IP to Ukraine, stepped up air defense based out of Lithuania (anticipating Kaliningrad as the first front of the war), etc.

No, they have not been "stepping up" relative to the existential threat at their door. They are still doing 10% of the minimum you'd expect from someone whose literal lives and civilization are at risk from a barbarian threat literally murdering their neighbors (and playing games with their own sovereignty more recently, with drone incursions).

The only way to stop Putin is with military force.

Europe is of course well aware that war with Russia seems increasingly inevitable, and have been preparing for it.

Europe is of course well aware that war with Russia seems increasingly inevitable, and have been preparing for it

What is the source for this? I have seen some news articles with this narrative, it was more on the line of fear-mongering rather than providing evidence.

Ukraine is only Putin's first step, and Europe is well aware of that, so look at all the advanced weapons systems Europe is now giving to Ukraine (Storm Shadow, SCALP, SAMP/T etc), as well as the statements they are making. They are well aware this has made them a target for Putin, with UK missiles having been used against Black Sea targets etc, but are doing it all the same.

Europe is not tolerating Russian drone incursions, and has been shooting them down, have been on air combat footing patrolling the finish border and Kalinograd region (operating out of Lithuania), boosting defense of the Suwałki Gap, etc.

YouTube is perhaps one of the best sources of information, since US MSM is not interested.

YouTube is perhaps one of the best sources of information, since US MSM is not interested

You lost me at this. If your official source of information is YouTube, then good luck.

If you think about it the war could have ended years ago and all the Ukranian/Russian lives lost could have been avoided if EU leaders were not so arrogant.

How exactly is Europe to blame for Russia continuing its war in Ukraine? Russia has clearly demonstrated a lack of interest in peace on any terms that could be acceptable to Ukraine.

Our car industry (among others) showed we're quite capable of shooting ourselves in the foot. No need for external "big events".

European defense industry seems pretty strong

Compared to who? The US?

Yes. The US defense industry depends on European one. Take a look at F35 and where the components are made.

If it comes down to European vs Russian manufacturing capacity for missiles and hi-tech weaponry, etc, I'd put my money on Europe. Europe also has the advantage of seeing 5 years of Russia throwing their best at Ukraine, having their air defenses repeatedly breached by Ukraine, even deep into Russia using slow low-tech drones - they know many of Russia's weaknesses.

If it comes down to European vs Russian manufacturing capacity for missiles and hi-tech weaponry, etc

Well duh, EU GDP is like 3000x Russian one, Italy alone is richer than Russia, so ofc EU military combined is greater than Russia.

Russia is broke gas station with nukes, not really a benchmark for military supremacy.

Sure are holding their own against the supposedly much richer Europe at this moment.

The US GBP is 100x large than Iranian one and yet the US cannot open the Strait of Hormuz and even defend own bases in the region from cheap drones (52 aircraft lost, most on the ground). GDP is not the only factor when it comes to military capabilities.

Yeah, weakness and appeasement gets that.

Tell me a better place to be in ? Please don't tell me the US.

US. Or China if you are Chinese

Both in longer term ofc

China perhaps... but US? really? personally I can't think of any single person who grew up (like me) in Europe and would choose US as a destination.

From my point of view is as awful as it can get: stark inequality, literally hundreds of thousands of homeless people roaming, no basic health care, but to be honest just the number of guns pro capita is enough to keep me and most of other Europeans away for good, it's just insane for what we're accustomed to. And I'm not even referring to the dystopian situation worsened daily by the current administration.

Unless you're the kind of person who confuses absolute numbers (e.g. money you can spend per month) for actual wealth / quality of life / freedoms / rights protection / etc. Then perhaps USA is the right place, I guess?

Homeless:

FWIW, FEANTSA estimated over 1.2MM homeless in Europe in their most recent report[1]. That's over a population of 515MM so ~23 per 10k population. Us 746k homeless is roughly 22 per 10k population. I suspect that differences in methodology will overwhelm that 1/10k difference, but the order of magnitude seems similar.

1/3 of the US homeless are unsheltered ("Living Rough" in the FEANTSA terminology). A quick skim of the FEANTSA report did not show any countries breaking out their rough-sleepers from the rest of the data. I do suspect that this number is higher than in the EU.

1: https://www.feantsa.org/files/Themes/Overview/2024/Rapport_-...

Perhaps in USA is very much unevenly distributed? I visted a couple of big cities in California and the situation is abysmal, I don't know of any place in Europe even close to that, still have to see campings in the middle of a big city. I could't see the same in other cities I visited, e.g. Las Vegas and Miami.

The numbers seem to say it's the same in theory, in practice my experience is that it very much doesn't _feel_ the same.

still have to see campings in the middle of a big city

I saw that in London, in Rome and afair in Berlin

Not to the same extend as camping villages in LA but still. But I also didn't go that much inside those bad parts of cities in Europe, in US I drove through them

Europe has no money.

And yet, more USians move to my "poor" country than the other way around. Make of that what you will.

That well-paid Americans like to WFH on Malaga beaches is not a testament to the Spanish economy, but to its weather and (more importantly) low cost of living.

In any case, don't be too sure about your claim. According to <https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-...>, 170K Spanish-born live in the US. By contrast, 69K US-born live in Spain <https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-...>. Given that the US (341 million) has 7.25 times Spain's population (47 million), this means that a Spaniard is 17-18 times more likely to move to the US, than an American is to move to Spain.

This is… a mathematically correct but practically useless way to compare migration flows. Using this approach, Singaporeans are more likely to move to China than Chinese to move to Singapore. Mathematically true, and tells us much about the relative sizes of these two countries, but very, very little about relative attractiveness as a place of living.

If we were to take all preceding arguments seriously, couldn't that be explained by americans going to live in a low-cost-of-living country once they've earned their living?

(Don't know your country to know if that's true or not, but it's a possibility)

more USians move to my "poor" country than the other way around.

Retirees and people who already made money to outbid the locals on housing and purchasing power.

Why would they move to a more expensive country where they'd feel poor?

Emigrating is not an easy task (even with money), think why they do it and why the don't want to live on the country they were born.

Think about it... a hint, it's not about money.

The demonym is American, not whatever you wrote. Unless your poor country is New Zealand, that's not the case.

Being pedantic America is the continent. So a chilean should be as "American" as Donald Trump.

No, it isn't. Everyone knows exactly what "American" means and it's never a Chilean.

It's actually the other way around. All we have is money that we stole from the colonies.

If the car companies actually go down the drain I have no clue what products of note we would still be producing that would continue to bring money in. So, I think our goose is cooked here in Europe.

I mean this is just such FUD.

In Ireland alone we manufacture:

* Cardiovascular Stents (80% of Global Supply)

* Orthopaedic Knee Implants (75% of Global Supply)

* Acute Hospital Ventilators (50% of Global Supply)

* Contact Lenses (World Leader)

19 of the world's top 20 pharmaceutical companies operate manufacturing, R&D, or biopharma facilities in Ireland; this compromises over 50% of all physical goods exported from Ireland, totaling well over €100 billion annually. Needless to say it's also the pivotal manufacturing hub for high-demand GLP-1 weight-loss and diabetes treatments (like Mounjaro).

Ireland is among the top global exporters of antisera, blood fractions, and complex cell cultures, making it indispensable to global healthcare infrastructure.

Ireland is the absolute world leader in dairy science per capita, and produces roughly 10% to 15% of the entire world's infant milk formula, with estimates indicating that roughly one in ten to one in seven babies globally consume formula manufactured in the country.

That's an Island of less than 5 million people, 1/8th the size of Texas, that was basically bypassed by the Industrial Revolution and had no colonial benefit. Now extrapolate for a second and imagine what Germany is manufacturing.

The average salary (not including RSUs/Bonus) in Dublin's Silcon Docklands is north of €130k+, with sick pay, 23 days leave, and the sort of employee protections which would be an utter fantasy in the US (defined redundancy payments, mandated collective bargaining, governance processes around mass redundancy handling at state level).

This was hugely evident during the recent spate of tech layoffs - employers planning collective dismissals are obliged to hold a mandatory 30-day consultation with employee representatives and notify the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment beforehand. Issuing premature "done deal" announcements before meaningful consultation breaches Irish law.

Even at the micro level, non-collective or individual restructuring must still rely on objective selection criteria and fair procedures. Failing to do so exposes employers to Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) claims for unfair or constructive dismissal.

There's also very very strict regulations around work/life issues. A famous case this year in 2023 where a Customer Care Team Lead at the Dublin office of Israeli software company Wix was dismissed after posting comments on LinkedIn. In her posts, she described Israel as a "terrorist state" and referred to Zionism as "the root of violence" while expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people. In July 2024, the WRC ordered Wix to pay Carey €35,000 in compensation after Wix acknowledged that the dismissal was "procedurally unfair" under Irish employment law.

In short, we're not that poor and have significant societal safety-nets that make up the delta in direct wages.

They don't call us Europoors for nothing

What is perhaps more important from ASML's standpoint is that none of the ongoing fab projects in Europe are leading-edge fabs set to use EUV and eventually High-NA EUV lithography scanners. The tools that European fabs use today and that new facilities are set to use in the future are mature tools that cost considerably less than advanced EUV or immersion DUV scanners. This is perhaps a concern for ASML, as the company is naturally interested in selling its more sophisticated and expensive equipment.

Missing from article is where they are selling which I assume is mostly Taiwan and America.

Bloomberg[1] has a breakdown based on ASML filings. For Q2, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan made up 77% of ASML's orders, with China representing another 14%. Given China is on the list, I imagine this includes non-EUV tech as well given the sanctions.

The fact that Europe has incredibly limited frontier chip making capability is the issue, though. Even if they can produce other chips, its position is not at all resilient.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-22/asml-exec...

US is only 10-15% of ASML's sales

Europe is mostly interested in supporting its car industry. But soon they won't have to worry about that either.

There are no companies in Europe designing high-end semiconductors because the wages are much lower than in the U.S. The best European talent is moving Stateside and raking in ten times what they can get at home without having to build up seniority first.

I'm european and I would buy an ASML t-shirt, will this move the needle enough?

Best I can do is half a pair of ASML socks.

I would buy that Lego set.

Amusement Park continent. And yes, I'm European and know what I'm talking about.

You must be living in one of those nicer parts where tourism is present.

Semiconductor fabs involve a lot of hazardous chemicals, process changes and high energy consumption. Exactly the kind of thing European regulations tend to deter or slow down. Which is somewhat fine if there is nowhere else to build it, but if other places are easier, well...

Everyone loves a good race to the bottom with the environment

Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the US all share comparable living standards to Western European states yet are able to maintain and expand semiconductor manufacturing.

The issue is with policymaking - coordination between the EU, national, and local governments is weak so high capex projects become risky.

Edit: can't reply

Your first 3 countries are also incredibly poor comparisons for living standards as they have horrendous work/life balance.

Their hours worked are comparable to most Western European states as well now [0]. Germany is unique in Europe based on hours worked, and is why German industry is pushing to bring back the 40 hour work week.

[0] - https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/hours-worked.html

comparable living standards

So vague as to be utterly meaningless.

And slow moving regulation literally incentivises high capex long-horizon investment.

HDI is a good metric for gauging living standards [0]

And slow moving execution and creation of relevant legislation is a hindrance for capex in high risk projects like those in the semiconductor segment.

The Draghi report was published 2 years ago, and remains largely unimplemented.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...

And slow moving regulation literally incentivises high capex long-horizon investment.

What?

I mean Ireland has some of the most strenuous regulations in this regard, with dozens of data centres blocked over planning and environmental impact assessments. Despite this Intel still put €30 billion in turning a 360-acre former stud farm in Kildare into a semiconductor wafer fabrication facility, powered entirely by green energy, and acting a key location for production of Intel’s 14nm process technology. They currently pull 1,677,197 MWh/year from our grid.

More to the point, from 2019 they built €17 billion new fab development which doubled the manufacturing capacity available in Ireland and enabled the production of Intel 4, the company’s most advanced process technology.

For better or worse, Ireland’s extremely lax tax rules resulted in a ton of multinational corporate cash ‘stuck’ there with companies having the option of spending there roughly tax free or repatriating back to the US at some rate higher than that. It also really helps sell the ‘of course an Irish subsidiary owns all of our IP’ tax claims if there is actual spending there, hence you got all the pharma investment and the capital projects from others like Intel and Apple.

"Trapped capital" is not why Intel has doubled down on Ireland.

It's because whenever Intel asks for anything, the Taoiseach, IDA, and Invest Ireland will move mountains to do it.

Ireland is extremely business friendly because their leadership actually listens to industry.

While I agree completely with you regarding how we handle FDI, the role of Enterprise Ireland, and that our ability to act as an educated, stable and culturally compatible western european base for US industry is not to be understated, the Intel situation in particular has its own special nuance.

This is where the 'Inside Tennis' knowledge of the Irish Tech industry from someone working within it comes in handy. Enter the 21st Century Luddite, Thomas Reid, from stage left.

Thomas is an eccentric, independent bachelor farmer whose family has owned a 72-acre farm next to Intel's Leixlip manufacturing campus for generations.

Ireland’s State Industrial Development Agency (IDA) attempted to use a Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) to buy Reid's land so that Intel could proceed with a multi-billion euro expansion of its microchip production plant. The land was valued at €5 million. During the negotiations that followed, the farmer was reportedly offered in the region of €10 million. He turned it down. Reid had no interest in being a millionaire. Instead, he continued to live on-site without a telephone or modern amenities while taking on Intel and the state alone.

The battle culminated in a landmark legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Ireland, where Reid ultimately won a historic victory against corporate overreach and protected his property rights

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lonely_Battle_of_Thomas_Re...

https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/3s4bg1/how_a_farme...

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/commercial-property/inte...

https://www.rte.ie/culture/2020/1102/1003311-the-lonely-batt...

Rather the US lax rules regarding their own enforcement.

The Double Irish (& Dutch Sandwich) where Companies routed profits through two Irish-registered subsidiaries, attributing intellectual property royalties to a management seat in a tax haven like Bermuda, is closed since 2015.

Subsequent sequential mismatch structures (the "Single Malt" tool) that replaced the Double Irish for certain firms using non-EU residency loops were also banned. Finally there's a 12.5% charge on unrealized capital gains when a company moves its assets or tax residency out of Ireland.

The headline tax rate and the effective tax rate are also very different things. France's effective corporate tax rate was actually lower than Irelands - but France is an absolutely brutal place to do business in for employers and they've comparatively no english-language tech FDI to speak of.

France corporate taxes are not that bad, but the corporate paid social charges are massive (40-45% of employees gross salary)

I pay similar in the USA and get literally nothing in “social” or otherwise return. I’d trade with french anytime

construction kicked off in 2019 on a €17 billion new fab development which will double

I think what the OP wanted to highlight is right here: in China or Taiwan etc. this would not have taken 7 years.

high energy consumption

Just to address this separately: there is effectively energy rationing in several European countries, where the government intervenes to prioritize who should receive energy first (e.g., the Netherlands and Denmark).

Most fabs build their own separate power grid.

And Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are also energy poor states that have been able to maintain capacity.

The energy excuse is true for some manufacturing processes like automotive in CEE which were pants that were built in the 1990s to 2000s and leveraged Russian ONG, but is a red herring for a lot of other manufacturing processes in Europe.

European states have a coordination problem as Draghi pointed out 2 years ago.

TSMC alone uses 1/8th of Taiwan's electricity (and rising). They make it work.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/taiwan-semiconductor

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/tsmc-could-accoun...

A consequence of a totally self-imposed handicap.

I get the feeling you're suggesting it's due to government regulation or 'socialist' policies.

But no, this failure is due a mixture or privatisation and politicians looking no further than the next election, leading to structural underinvestment.

Oh, and the energy transition going faster than even the most forward looking scenarios anticipated.

AFAIK the problem in NL is due to chronic underinvestment in the grid infrastructure since the big privatisation wave. Combined with the heavy subsidy of industry causing the issues.

Solvable but we need to be much smarter and redirect the fossil subsidies to reducing risk for grid-scale batteries and adding more grid capacity.

I wonder. Had any privatisation in NL any net benefits for the population? Not talking shareholder revenues.

This is some ridiculous speculation, we do plenty of such critical manufacturing in EU. Regulations is not why we don't make highly-integrated chips here.

Why then?

A probably non negligible weight is that decadence is bearish.

Those alive invest in long term planning, those with a dead drive get conservative in their action.

Lately specifically because of Intel having financial issues, they already started building their fabs in Dresden and Wrocław when they cancelled last minute.

This was strategically planned with EU as part of bringing back production locally, similar to CHIPS Act in the US.

So you are fully dependent on US companies anyway.

What is so energy consuming around fabs? The light source? I always thought of these as high-precision, not-too-high-volume processes and would have expected energy requirements to be lower than e.g. a car factory (or similar to e.g. a mall) and completely negligible on a national grid scale or compared to something like a smelter or lignite mine.

Edit: AI claims HVAC and air filtering/handling can be 40-50% of energy usage. Plus a megawatt per EUV scanner (ok, the latter matches what I would have guessed, but compared to the 16 MW of a single large bucket wheel excavator or estimates I've seen for large shopping malls, that's not that insane either).

TSMC's Arizona fab needs 200MW of electricity.

But even more importantly, they need 2 separate completely independent substation feeds, since a 15 second interruption can cause 0.1B Euro of losses.

Finally, and here is where Europe really really suffers, generally you need these things to be planned, approved and built within a year.

Why would the turnaround time need to be so small?

Finally, and here is where Europe really really suffers, generally you need these things to be planned, approved and built within a year.

I think that is not even possible in China, let alone in the USA.

Large shopping malls would fail the air purity requirements for semiconductor manufacturing.

EUV lithography and etching rooms require ISO class 1 clean rooms. Those can have a maximum of 10 particles of size 0.1 microns per cubic meter.

While a shopping mall can get away with 2 - 4 air changes per hour, an ISO class 1 clean room requires 400-600 an hour, or about 10 a minute. Airflow needs to also be controlled: vertical and laminar. Every human entering the cleanroom needs to undergo an air shower with speeds of 60-90 mph to shear off loose skin flakes, hair and lint. This area needs to maintain constant positive air pressure to repel outside dust as humans move in and out.

In the EUV lithography systems, temperature control is measured in milliKelvins (0.001 C). If a wafer stage has a temperature variation of 0.05 C, the silicon expands by a few nanometers and the multimillion dollar batch is toast. Meanwhile in the same room, the EUV machine is generating extreme ultraviolet light using a plasma light source that gets to above 200,000 C. That's 40x hotter than the surface of the sun.

I always thought of these as high-precision, not-too-high-volume processes

EUV rooms are churning out about 150 wafers an hour, 24/7. That sounds like not too high of a volume, but each wafer is about 500 cpus. So 75,000 cpus an hour.

I doubt I could even work in a fab having psoriasis.

seems like doing this in a vacuum would be more economical

Laymens guess what problems it could introduce:

Vacuum does not dissipate heat well (extra engineering in that department)

Vacuum is never 100% vacuum. If you have some dust in the air, it will mostly flow to the direction of the airflow, but in vacuum dust particles will do random walk thing and settle on surfaces.

Plus the fact that then you need the everything to be structurally strong to be able to support 1atm of pressure differential, keep the vacuum sealed, and keep material degassing under control, so you end up with some heavy duty, expensive stuff. Pretty sure a lot of steps in the chip fab are done under very very high vaccums tho!

I worked a lot with and built up ultra-high vacuum systems during my PhD. At least for that level of vacuum, you introduce a lot of headache.

You can't use normal plastic or any kind of lubricant anymore because it starts degasing inside the vacuum, pump down after opening to air is a multi-day process that involves heating everything up to 150°C to get rid of the water that will settle on basically every surface when you pull the vacuum, every electricity feedthrough is a potential point of failure, transfering objects between different stages is a huge hassle etc. pp.

I'm sure there's still lots of UHV and HV systems in a chip fab, but there's no way that's easier on a full factory scale than clean room operation.

Life cycle of the fab is 3-5 years, an opimistic estimate of slow down in europe due to all the paper work is 2-3 years, so then you would rather not build the plant.

How? I thought there was still tons of demand for every node that has launched in the last 15+ years.

Another concern is that even advanced silicon produced in Ireland or at ESMC is then shipped to other regions for packaging, meaning that European companies have largely lost their ability to produce sophisticated chips entirely in Europe. In turn, this means that, for now, there is hardly any strategic point for European authorities to create demand for chips that are 'Made in Europe' because they are either not assembled in Europe, not produced in Europe, or not developed in Europe. We have no idea whether this is eventually going to change, but there are currently no signs that it will.

This is just such a dire situation to be in. Even USA has seen the writing on the wall regarding China-Taiwan which is why it has been strategically re-homing all the most advanced chip fab technology to Arizona [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC_Arizona

This was a major flaw that I and others brought up a couple years ago when the EU was consulting industry about making its own CHIPS Act.

While bleeding edge backend processes got the bulk of reporting, the major push for the American CHIPS Act was the rebuild packaging capacity in the US (Samsung is working on this in Texas).

This was also the same approach Taiwan, Malaysia, and China used to climb up the semiconductor value chain.

The EU also failed to tie design capacity together as well, as semiconductor design capacity is almost nonexistent in Europe.

Semiconductor design capacity is a massive issue almost always overlooked in these conversations. Spot on.

It seems to be "dump on Europe" day which I'm sure is popular but lets just stop for a second and ask what the sales of ASML machinery to the US would be without the CHIPS act .... a massive subsidy. Aren't subsidies supposed to be a bad European thing??? I'm confused. Are we free market proponents or planned economy proponents?

I don't think this is the main point (subsidies). ASML sold nothing in Europe because Europe is not a factor in semi manufacturing, primarily due to regulations and bureaucracy.

primarily due to regulations and bureaucracy

Or, more likely, due to energy prices.

The energy prices in Europe are also up due to regulations and bureaucracy, without which the continent would be full of nuclear plants.

Europe is the only continent where some countries are close to fully nuclear and they aren't close to being the industrial powerhouses HN commenters would make you believe. Tell my why are the US (gas) and China (coal) are beating France (nuclear)?

The whole world essentially stopped building nuclear power plants at the end of the 1970s and there's one obvious answer which you guys just can't accept, so you keep inventing one stab-in-the-back narrative after another for why nuclear energy failed.

The whole world essentially stopped building nuclear power plants at the end of the 1970s

China has over 30 nuclear power plants currently in development, the only way nuclear "failed" is the industry's failure to convince dumb boomers not to regulate it out of existence in the west.

Energy prices are up in Europe because Europe was too dependent on Russia for gas (and now the US) and the Middle East for oil, not regulation. We are too dependent on fossil fuels because (mostly right wing) politicians tried to block/underinvest in wind/solar/geothermal for too long.

Almost correct, except it's the green/left that forced a shutdown of nuclear and sold the gas as "green". At least in Germany/Scandinavia, might be different in the rest of Europe.

During the chancellorship of Gerhard Schröder, the social democratic-green government decreed Germany's final retreat from using nuclear power by 2022.[1]

The Gerhard Schröder that

Since leaving public office, Schröder has worked for Russian state-owned energy companies, including Nord Stream AG, Rosneft, and Gazprom.[2]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der

The same regulations and bureaucracy that doesn't stop ASML from producing these machines? Makes sense. Also it's funny how in the US/China/EU threads, you'd never guess that China is state-run. You'd think they are a capitalist heaven like the US.

Could the "EU has too much bureaucracy" users even say how much more bureaucracy EU is producing compared to the US and China? I doubt it. The US Congress has produced some insane behemoths of laws where the glossary is bigger than your average EU directive, so please put some numbers behind your claims.

Lastly, I think the average HN user just doesn't understand that the EU streamlines regulation across 28 countries, which is almost the opposite of coming up with new regulations. It makes things easier. But that would already require an iota of knowledge past the HN kneejerk worldview.

I dont think there is any hard fact behind your statement. EU has a number of semiconductor companies and fabs, though they tend to focus on embedded/industrial applications. Some went bankrupt (e.g. a big German RAM manufacturer) and the number dwindled, but it's not like there's nothing.

Like in anything high tech you need either massive subsidies or network effects, this is why things have built up in Taiwan, Shenzhen and South Korea, with remnants in the US, EU and a bit more Japan as all three thought they can let the market play out, fell a bit behind, and then the network effects won out.

Similarly the car industry - Germany (and Japan) rose due to massive investment and network effects, then the shareholders put in CEOs with a clear mission just to milk the cows and get wealth out of the system; this gave China a chance to go all in on investments and overtake them on innovation and price. This has nothing to do with regulation, just with short-termism and the inherent diseases of a "pure" capitalism.

That there are few new innovative companies coming up is probably more due to regulations (need to figure out how to make the product work and be legal in various regimes). In turn that they don't scale is due to less financing options and a much more fragmented market (to sell in France and Spain and Poland you need to translate everything and adapt it to local expectations and payment standards.. to sell in Florida, Minnesota and Texas you just need to throw a single English version up.

A shame that the national governments keep blocking any real integration of the financial and regulatory regimes at EU level, this would solve the startup and scale up issues to a large degree. The EU just proposed "EU Inc" as a solution, not sure this will not be ground up in 27 regimes...

To give a idea of fun regulations. This is one regarding imports that my partner is dealing with recently.

A new regulation when importing into Europe, is that you need to show that import materials do not have toxic substances, ... on ... shipping labels (meaning the physical labels are free from harmful chemicals like BPA, PFAS, or PVC).

You need from every company that ships from China, they need to provide certificates that their shipping labels are toxic free.

Pulled from AI because i hate summarizing this...

* EU Ecolabel: The gold standard in Europe. It officially guarantees that a product has low aquatic toxicity, a reduced environmental footprint, and strictly limited hazardous substances throughout its life cycle.

* EN 13432 Certification: If using compostable labels (like those from Better Packaging Co.), this mandatory European standard ensures the label, liner, and adhesive break down safely in industrial composting without leaving toxic chemical residues.

* FSC (Forest Stewardship Council): Certifies that the paper backing and label face stock are sourced from sustainably managed, non-destructive forests.

* Phenol-Free / BPA-Free Declarations: Thermal printing labels must formally declare compliance with EU Regulation 2016/2235, which legally restricts bisphenols in thermal paper across the European Economic Area.

Its a mess of paperwork ... We have not talked about a ton of others, and those are on the import side.

We had some fun discussions about vitamine pill manufacturing, where importing materials made it "made in China".

But if we imported the raw material, and the capsules are made in Europe, and its mixed / bottled here. Well, made in Europe. But the prime materials that goes into your body is from China ... Does not matter.

But wait, if the capsules are made in China and mixed / bottled here in Europe, then its still made in China. Because the capsule somehow made the difference?! I do not remember the details but the amount of easy customer cheating that can be done with "Made in EU / Germany / France"..

I can go on with some of the insanities i get told about ... There are good rules but a lot are like this mix that make no sense, and you can almost hear that somebody pushed for exceptions when the rule was designed. So you get this odd crap that half the time makes no sense.

Hard to do business when the rules are often a issue.

They're making the point that you're wrong. The CHIPS act under Biden is a big subsidy to bring modern fabs to the US and without it there wouldn't be any orders in the US either (which has less regulation). The EU came up with a competitor to that subsidy but it wasn't generous enough to compete (neither regulation nor bureaucracy at play here).

On a side note, none of the TSMC fabs in the US are cutting edge. They're all at least a generation behind.

No, Europe is not a factor in cutting-edge chip assembly. That is a tiny fraction of the overall supply chain to manufacture a finished, compute-ready semiconductor. There is sense in not trying to compete with the "sexy" part of chip manufacturing, and instead concentrating on the steps of the supply chain you are already good at.

Isn’t ASML a European company?

Europe is continually complaining about its dependency on Chinese steel, cars, electronics and semiconductors yet their carmakers are buying cheap Chinese steel instead of European steel and European semiconductor manufacturers are preferring cheap Chinese semiconductor equipment over ASML gear.

The European Commission wanted to put hefty tariffs on dumped Chinese steel but the carmakers sought an exemption. They don't care about European sovereignty, only about their profits. Penny wise and pound foolish. I doubt there will still be a European car industry in two decades or so.

Europe is a lost continent.

Europe is continually complaining about its dependency on Chinese steel, cars, electronics and semiconductors yet their carmakers are buying cheap Chinese steel instead of European steel and European semiconductor manufacturers are preferring cheap Chinese semiconductor equipment over ASML gear.

You clearly have no idea about the value creation chain. Steel is a commodity, why shoot yourself into the foot by buying expensive one. And semiconductors are not commodities.

But I guess this logic only makes sense to a country that insists on using its own overpriced steel to save a couple jobs.

The Netherlands has always put its economic chips on America and Asia.

Europe is just a geographic accident as far as the Dutch are concerned.

With all the regulations nobody in their right mind would build a fab in Europe.

Europe is increasingly relying on the rest of the world to supply it with critical things. It’s FAFOed with regulations that have driven these things elsewhere and now is heading into a “FO” world of hurt as the tables are turned and they desperately need things and have to pay the price. This will likely define the next 20 years in Europe.

Europe, like the US, is rich because it outsources lower-value production and focuses on higher value targets.

Chip production is not nearly as high in value as all the things you can build with those chips.

Local production is about supply chain security, not profit. Europe doesn’t mind one bit paying for chips produced somewhere else, but it does mind a world order where global trade is unreliable.

If we did mind a world were global trade was unreliable we have a military to match that concern, but we don't. The Houthi close the red sea for years and we can't do anything about it. Iran, attacked by the US, retaliates against us by closing the strait of Hormutz and we sit in the monitoring chair.

It is what it is.

when China finally cracks EUV we might be able to afford PC parts again?

oddly cheering for this but I doubt it will end well

* https://www.reuters.com/world/china/how-china-built-its-manh...

They are not cracking EUV, they are finding ways that actually scale. Chips can be much cheaper than they are currently. I mean yes, obviously we cannot be confident ntil it happens, but they are already making 5nm with DUV.

When China leads chip making the rest of the world is just vasal states.

Yes it will not end well because Amurica will put a crater in the middle of the fab if it ever becomes viable.

America will 100% not do that, unless they want matching craters in all of their fabs, or worse, in Taiwan’s.

Happy to hear India got mentioned by the same executive during that conversation. We are just started buying from them. I went to Semicon India 2026, held in delhi last week. The energy was amazing. Really pleasant. all big names including ASML.

It's is heartening looking at a country like India and thinking that it only seems to be a little behind China on the same trajectory. The little flashes of news as they start settling in to more interesting and high tech industries. Whatever good or evil comes out of their growing geopolitical power at least that is another billion people with a clear enough path to wealth and prosperity.

a little behind China on the same trajectory

In my opinion, India is around 30 years behind China. This is unlikely to change for several reasons. However, the primary reason is that no Indian government ever had a manufacturing policy that comes close to China's. The service economy is strong but employs a tiny percentage of the population.

Most of Indian government spending is on welfare followed by endemic corruption. It leaves very little money for nation building.

Thirty? Try more like 10, and that’s only for the advanced nodes. Everything else, we will have capacity coming online soon enough.

Design, the gap is nonexistent in terms of talent deployed (though we have some way to go to have homegrown product companies). Which puts us roughly where Europe is.

Also consider, a tiny percentage of the Indian population is a ridiculous number of people. Dwarfing pretty much any other country except China.

Your last point on welfare and corruption is also false; 35% of government spend is on interest payments (which is kind of normal for most countries?) and 30% is on infrastructure and other capex. Defence is 8% and central welfare schemes plus co-sponsored schemes with the states are only 26%. The point being, while corruption is definitely a problem, it doesn’t significantly come out of the central budget. And welfare is smaller than infrastructure spending even if it’s quite significant (and it better be, in a country like this).

The infrastructure spending is where and how the corruption happen. The cases of bridge collapses in bihar gujarat, the mp 90 degree bridge etc should be obvious cases of corruption.

it's not like bridges don't collapse in china. There were two major ones last year.

If India is 10 years behind China, that would mean in 2036 India will be where China is today. What's the chance of that happening?

Only an estimated 6 million Indians work in IT and tech services where the money is. India's working age population is approximately 950 million. India had the golden opportunity to bring manufacturing to India when Western companies wanted to reduce their dependence on China. But it wasted it.

I don't know where you are getting that 30% spending on infrastructue.

The 30% spending is from government numbers in the last budget, so let’s get that out of the way.

How many people do you think could conceivably work in manufacturing? And who buys all those manufactured goods? The social problem isn’t solved by quotas.

For whatever reason, India had quite a lead on pharma manufacturing and still runs carries its own pretty well

India's lead in pharma manufacturing is because of their willingness to ignore US patents for simple drugs , not a technological reason.

That’s great, but does not translate well to ..say.. manufacturing modern chips or jet engines.