The Austrian subsidiaries of Infineon, NXP and AT&S have been allowed to join an existing Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI) in microelectronics approved by the Commission in 2018.
The public funding is expected to unlock and additional€530m ($620m) of additional investment from the companies.
Another IPCEI is under consideration (seeGermany ready to help Europe invest 'billions' in chip manufacturing).
Executive vice-president of the European Commission MargretheVestager, in charge of competition policy, said: "The IPCEI's integration is very important for its success – we have approved additional support by Austria to three projects because they meet the high bar of adding significant value to the existing IPCEI, with important collaborations with the existing participants."
2018年建立的第一个微电子IPCEI最初是在法国，德国，意大利和英国，允许公共支持为17.5亿欧元（约合2亿美元）。
IPCEI允许国道不仅仅是支持研发，还可以支持初始制造，并且被欧洲视为允许公司补贴而无需破坏世界贸易组织（WTO）协议的一种方式。
Microelectronics IPCEI的目标是开发用于汽车，物联网（IoT）的创新微电子技术和组件以及其他应用程序，例如空间，航空电子学和安全性及其首次工业部署。IPCEI最初涉及27家公司和两个研究组织。
Austria applied to join the IPCEI in December 2020 saying that three companies would use funds to focus on the areas of energy efficient power semiconductors, advanced security and interconnections, as well as on organic packaging technology.
The European Commission assessed that the projects involve technological and financial risk and that tax payer money is needed to provide an incentive to the companies to invest in the projects.
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