Länder leaders have demanded more speed from the EU Commission in funding projects for future technologies. Saxony's Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) said Monday in Berlin that the EU needs a different "approach." Baden-Württemberg's head of government Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) said important funding projects must come faster and should not be so costly. The EU is competing with the U.S. and China, he said. The president of the Federal Association of German Industry, Siegfried Russwurm, said two years approval time is clearly too long.
In the course of an important joint European project (IPCEI) on microelectronics, 31 German projects from eleven states are to be supported in Germany with a total of about four billion euros, as already known. This involves projects from Infineon and Bosch, for example. Seventy percent of the funding will be provided by the federal government - 30 percent by the eleven participating states in which the companies are implementing their projects. Approval from the EU Commission is required for this. According to the Federal Ministry of Economics, the companies are investing a total of ten billion euros, for example for production facilities, manufacturing plants and the development of new types of semiconductor chips.
