Summary
- The study puts EU suppliers’ share of data centre semiconductor spend at six cents per euro.
- The corresponding estimates are seven cents for server manufacturing and eight cents for cloud infrastructure.
- Its findings add a manufacturing dimension to Europe’s debate over AI infrastructure sovereignty.
EU-headquartered companies capture only a small proportion of the money Europe spends on key data centre hardware and infrastructure, according to a new study from the Global Electronics Association and DECISION Études & Conseil.
The report estimates that EU-headquartered suppliers retain six cents from every euro spent in Europe on data centre semiconductors.
It puts the equivalent share at seven cents for server manufacturing and assembly and eight cents for cloud infrastructure.
The findings give Europe’s data centre expansion an industrial-policy dimension beyond where facilities are built and how they are powered.
Infrastructure demand does not guarantee local manufacturing value
Data centres generate investment in construction, electrical systems, cooling, fibre, and operations in their host markets, but much of the equipment installed inside the buildings comes through global supply chains.
Processors, AI accelerators, memory, network equipment, storage, power electronics, and server systems can represent a substantial share of the capital deployed after the building shell and utility infrastructure have been completed.
The association argues that European demand for those systems is increasing faster than the bloc’s ability to manufacture some of them domestically.
That creates a gap between hosting more digital infrastructure and capturing the higher-value parts of its technology supply chain.
Europe does retain significant industrial capabilities in areas including semiconductor manufacturing equipment, power electronics, industrial automation, and specialist engineering. Its position is much weaker in leading AI accelerators and volume server systems.
The study uses that imbalance to argue for an industrial strategy connecting semiconductor policy with downstream electronics and system manufacturing.
Sovereignty extends below the building
European policy around digital sovereignty has often focused on where cloud workloads and data are hosted.
The supply-chain question goes further. A data centre can sit inside the EU, operate under European regulation, and use European electricity while remaining dependent on processors, memory, networking equipment, and systems manufactured or controlled elsewhere.
Reducing that dependence is not simply a matter of adding factories. Advanced semiconductor and server supply chains rely on large capital commitments, specialist skills, component ecosystems, logistics, intellectual property, and enough demand to support production at scale.
Nor does the study establish that complete regional self-sufficiency is commercially realistic or desirable. Data centre infrastructure is inherently connected to global technology supply chains.
It does, however, quantify the limited share currently captured by EU-headquartered businesses as Europe commits increasing amounts of capital to AI infrastructure.
That makes manufacturing capacity part of the same policy discussion as grid connections, planning, and compute sovereignty. Building more data centres increases European infrastructure capacity; it does not automatically create a European server or semiconductor industry around them.
