Insider Brief
- Emmanuel Macron announced €1.55 billion in additional funding for France’s quantum and semiconductor sectors under the France 2030 program.
- The package includes €1 billion for quantum technologies and €550 million for semiconductor research and industrialization tied to AI and data centers.
- Macron linked the investment to European technological sovereignty and increasing competition from the United States and China in critical technologies.
- Photo from Pexels by Çağrı KANMAZ.
France will commit an additional €1 billion to its national quantum plan and €550 million to a future European semiconductor program, French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Friday, May 22, during a visit to the Very Large Computing Center (TGCC) of the Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission (CEA) in Bruyères-le-Châtel. Both envelopes draw from the France 2030 investment program.
The quantum announcement cited “acceleration” from the United States and China in critical technologies as a driver. “What we are talking about today is the challenge of our independence, of our sovereignty over these great capabilities of electronics, computing and also artificial intelligence for the years and decades to come,” Macron said, as quoted by Le Monde. “We need to accelerate innovation and change scale.”
The semiconductor commitment, the French leader said, “This will finance research and industrialization on technologies relevant to artificial intelligence and data centers.”
Context Within Existing Plans
The new funding adds to a quantum plan of €1.8 billion covering the period 2021-2025, which was itself supplemented in 2024 by €500 million through a defense sector public procurement program, source noted. On semiconductors, the announcements build on a national strategy launched in 2022 with €5.5 billion in total commitments.
Macron visited the Lucy photonic quantum computer during the same trip. The announcement came at the end of a European forum on computing power, quantum sciences and technologies, and semiconductors, with private sector investment and partnership announcements also expected from industry participants present at the event.
The French president also announced that the government would present a new national electronics strategy for 2035 in July.
Push for European-Level Action
A presidential advisor cited by Le Monde described the context: “We have a global acceleration of the large power blocs that are the United States on the one hand and China on the other, and therefore the very substantial national effort that we are making only makes sense in a strategy of which the magnitude is truly that of Europe.” The advisor added that France needs to be “much more proactive at European level” within the future EU budget for 2028-2034, currently under negotiation.
Macron is expected to again advocate for a European loan for research and innovation in critical technologies, a position that has previously encountered resistance from several member states including Germany, the French outlet reported. He will also ask French research organizations – the CEA, the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), and the National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (Inria) – to form a European research and technology coalition with their counterparts.
The announcements form part of a broader push for “European preference” in public procurement, favoring technologies and equipment developed within Europe. The source reported that Macron intends this message of European sovereignty and independence to be a defining theme of his final year in office.
