Billions for Brainport Eindhoven to keep ASML

2024-03-28 17:18:00

ASML CEO Peter Wennink was served on Thursday. The boss of the microchip group recently publicly expressed his chagrin about the negative business sentiment in political The Hague. Wennink saw too many deteriorations in the Dutch business climate, and he threatened to allow ASML to grow further outside the Netherlands. The company wants to double its size in the coming years. He had plenty of offers from abroad. Countries would like to see the largest chip manufacturer in the world come.

Alarm bells went off in politics in The Hague. Outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte called on the House of Representatives to seriously listen to the complaints from the business community. A parliamentary committee went to Veldhoven to personally inform itself of developments in the microchip sector. And under the mysterious name ‘Project Beethoven’, national and regional governments devised a joint plan to preserve ASML.

‘Beautiful playing field’

The outgoing cabinet presented the investment plan on Thursday afternoon. A total of 2.51 billion euros will be invested in Brainport Eindhoven. The government contributes 1.7 billion euros, the regional authorities the rest. To this end, the government is making use of the National Growth Fund, which was recently suddenly shut down because the forming parties want to use the money from this fund differently.

The investment is intended to build 20,000 additional houses in Eindhoven for ASML employees. This number is in addition to the already agreed 45,000 homes in the region. Roads and cycling and public transport connections are also being improved. In addition, extra money is being allocated for ‘talent development’, in order to reduce the labor shortage in the microchip sector. Universities, colleges and vocational training courses must come up with a training plan to be able to supply these employees, so that ASML no longer has to recruit so many staff from abroad. In the coming years, the training courses will receive an additional 450 million euros for this purpose.

The government hopes to keep ASML in the Netherlands. Outgoing minister Micky Adriaansens has ‘confidence’ in this, she says. “I think we have created a very nice playing field with this.” ASML has not yet responded.