Spain joins other EU countries in trying to lure chip makers to build factories in their country. The country’s prime minister announced a multi-billion euro investment.
Spain will spend 11 billion euros on a plan to boost the semiconductor and microchip industry, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Monday. According to a report in Reuters, the new spending plan, mainly financed through European Union pandemic relief funds, will be approved ‘soon’, he said.
A worldwide shortage of microchips, due to an unexpected peak of demand following the pandemic and supply chain bottlenecks, has forced manufacturers such as carmakers to slow down output.
Joining a European trend
Spain follows Germany and Italy in trying to solve their countries’ economic problems by using the EU’s pandemic relief funds to bribe large chip companies to open factories in their country.
Those funds are supposed to be used to protect consumers from the post-COVID economic downturn. Whether Spain and the others can meet that goal by throwing money at the international semiconductor industry remains to be seen.
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