Europe dreams of sovereignty, but its PCB industry vanishes before our eyes

When the EU introduced the Chips Act, it announced it with a familiar promise: technological sovereignty. More factories. Greater capacity. More control over the strategic products and semiconductors that will power Europe's future. But sovereignty is not a single component. It is an entire structure. The European political narrative assumes that strengthening semiconductor wafer production automatically achieves strategic autonomy. However, chips do not float in air. They need packaging, substrates, and, above all, printed circuit boards (PCBs). Without a local PCB manufacturing base, "autonomy" becomes a slogan, not a strategy