Europe is a lost continent.
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).
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.
More to the point, construction kicked off in 2019 on a €17 billion new fab development which will double the manufacturing capacity available in Ireland and enable the production of Intel 4, the company’s most advanced process technology.
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.
I think what the OP wanted to highlight is right here: in China or Taiwan etc. this would not have taken 7 years.
The issue is with policymaking - coordination between the EU, national, and local governments is weak so high capex projects become risky.
So vague as to be utterly meaningless.
And slow moving regulation literally incentivises high capex long-horizon investment.
What?
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...
But that's little consolation I understand. I get that when there are two elephants sitting on you, someone telling you how fortunate you are to not have a third one on top of you as well, is a little annoying.
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.
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.
Not such an easy thing to say if you’re the one facing that threat. Nobody wants their own country to be invaded and conquered.
And Russia would take that as a green light to keep on conquering other former Soviet states. Where do you draw the line?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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].
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.
Missing from article is where they are selling which I assume is mostly Taiwan and America.
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...
I guess the US chip designers could switch to Intel as a fab if they had to, but there are not even any US-made DUV machines, so far from self-sufficient.
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.
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?
Think about it... a hint, it's not about money.
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.
The american dream is dead, US is a country for working, not for living.
Definitely a testament to each country too - presumably they have a fairly wide choice. They wouldn't go somewhere they disliked the culture that much. We know how discerning US folk are.
(Don't know your country to know if that's true or not, but it's a possibility)
My country offers them both, people from lots of countries como here looking for money and also for a better way of living.
The lesson explains itself.