On Wednesday, the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported that
the Dutch government had launched a cross-ministry effort, dubbed “Operation
Beethoven”, to encourage ASML to continue to invest in the country.
For months, ASML, which sources parts from around the world
but assembles its machines in Veldhoven in the the south of the Netherlands,
has been warning against any moves that could hinder its ability to attract
skilled foreign labour.
ASML ranks among Europe’s most valuable tech firms; about
40% of its 23,000 employees in the Netherlands are not Dutch.
In January, the company’s CEO, Peter Wennink, said it was
poised to expand its operations. “Ultimately, we can only grow this company if
there are enough qualified people,” he told the Dutch broadcaster RTL.
“We prefer to do that here, but if we cannot get those
people here, we will get those people in Eastern Europe or in Asia or in the
United States.”
His warnings have played out against a backdrop of
government policies targeting migrants; the administration has been working to
scale back a tax break for highly skilled immigrants while weighing whether to
limit the number of foreigners who can attend Dutch universities.
Further moves to tighten immigration could be on the horizon
after last autumn’s election, which resulted in the far-right, anti-Islam Party
for Freedom (PVV) emerging as the largest party in parliament.
While the PVV, which won 37 seats, is still in fraught
negotiations aimed at cobbling together enough support to lead a government
with a majority in the 150-seat parliament, its leader, Geert Wilders, has said
his priorities include ushering in a stricter immigration policy.
During a January call with investors, Wennink laid bare what
that could mean for ASML. “Be careful, because you will soon get exactly what
you ask for,” he said. “The consequences of limiting labour migration are large
– we need those people to innovate. If we can’t get those people here, we will
go somewhere where we can grow.”
On Wednesday, De Telegraaf reported that Wennink was set to
meet the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte. The company had submitted several
requests to the government and had mentioned France as a possible destination
for expansion, the paper noted.
While ASML declined to comment, the country’s minister of
economic affairs, Micky Adriaansen, confirmed to Reuters that the government
was in talks with the company. “I don’t know if they would leave [the
Netherlands],” she said. “They want to grow. And they want to grow in such an
amount, it puts a pressure on our infrastructure.”
This year has seen shares in ASML, which dominates the
market for the lithography systems used to create the circuitry in chips, climb
to record highs, cementing its place as one of Europe’s largest companies by
market value.
Much of this growth has been buoyed by a boom in artificial
intelligence that has sent demand for chip technology soaring and that recently
saw US chipmaker Nvidia hit a stock market valuation of $2tn.
Chipmakers around the world have poured billions of dollars
of investment into new plants, spurred on by the rising use of semiconductors
in everyday devices as well as subsidies from the US and the EU aimed at
keeping the west ahead of China in the race for cutting-edge technology.
ASML is far from the first body to express concerns over how
the rise in anti-migrant sentiment is clashing with the continent’s economic
reality. In January, the EU’s top official for migration alluded to the need to
strike a balance between concerns over migration and the peril posed by the
continent’s ageing population.
“For demographic reasons, the population of working age in
the EU will decrease by 1m per year,” Ylva Johansson, the EU home affairs
commissioner, said. “That means that legal migration should grow by more or
less 1m per year. And that is really a challenge.”
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