India-EU FTA to build Silicon Silk Road for semiconductors

The India-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC) has advanced a Free Trade Agreement framework that aligns the EU Chips Act with India’s Semiconductor Mission to build a joint “Silicon Silk Road” semiconductor and AI hardware corridor.

• Technical & industrial actions: The partnership operationalizes joint R&D in advanced chip design, heterogeneous integration and PDKs, launches the €5m GANANA HPC project linking EU supercomputing centers (LIGHT, Leonard) with C-DAC, supports talent exchange to staff new Indian megafabs in Gujarat and Assam (pilot production by mid-2026), and underpins business moves such as Intel–Tata’s $14bn Gujarat fab MoU, NXP’s billion‑dollar India expansion, and Infineon’s new Ahmedabad capabilities center.
• Policy, risk and roadmap details: The alliance features an early-warning system for semiconductor supply chain disruptions, aligns AI and data privacy regulations to create a trusted hardware zone, faces negotiation friction over the EU’s CBAM and India’s infrastructure readiness, aims for first Made-in-India, EU-architecture chips by end‑2026 and eventual 2nm capability via deeper integration with ASML EUV tools, and is expected to trigger a second investment wave if the FTA is signed by early 2026.