Introduction to EFECS 2025

EFECS 2025 is the premier European Forum for Electronic Components and Systems. It is dedicated to supporting growth, innovation, and strategic leadership in the semiconductor and electronics sector. The event took place in Malta on December 3–4, 2025, and brought together industry leaders, policymakers, researchers, and innovators from across Europe.

In a fast-changing global context, Europe must turn ambitious ideas and publicly funded projects into real, market-ready solutions more quickly than ever. To stay competitive at the global level, strong investments are needed in advanced research, digital infrastructure, and emerging technologies and applications.

Open to both public and private stakeholders, EFECS is a unique platform to share results, exchange views, and receive valuable feedback. More than a conference, EFECS highlights the strong cooperation between academia, industry, public authorities, innovators, and participating Member States.

By developing advanced technologies, supporting startups and scale-ups, building key skills, and adapting regulatory frameworks, Europe can lead the next wave of global innovation in electronic components and systems.

IPCEI ME/CT at EFECS 2025: Two Dedicated Sessions

The IPCEI Microelectronics and Communication Technologies (IPCEI ME/CT) initiative featured at EFECS 2025 through two dedicated sessions.

Session 1 – IPCEI: Overview on European Industry Investment in the ECS
This session provided a high-level overview of how IPCEI supports major European industrial investments in electronic components and systems. It explained the role of IPCEI as a strategic financial and policy instrument to enable large-scale, high-risk industrial projects that are essential for Europe’s technological sovereignty.

Session 2 – Side Event: IPCEI ME/CT Workshop
This interactive workshop provided an overview of the IPCEI ME/CT initiative, its governance, and its four strategic workstreams. It highlighted concrete project achievements, cross-border collaboration, and how IPCEI ME/CT supports industrial deployment and ecosystem development across Europe.

Key Takeaways - IPCEI: overview on European Industry investiment in the ECS

The presentation highlighted how IPCEI plays a critical role in building Europe’s semiconductor future by bridging the gap between research and industrial deployment. IPCEI helps transform innovation into real industrial impact by supporting First Industrial Deployment (FID), which connects R&D results to manufacturing and market introduction .

Several key messages emerged:

• Strategic investments matter: IPCEI supports projects that strengthen Europe’s autonomy, sustainability, and security by reducing dependence on non-EU supply chains and ensuring trust in critical infrastructure.
• From ambition to impact: IPCEI complements other instruments such as venture capital and Chips JU by focusing on large-scale, high-risk industrial deployment.
• Cross-border collaboration is essential: IPCEI enables hundreds of collaborations across Member States, creating strong European value chains and positive spill-over effects.
• Economic and societal benefits: Through IPCEI, Europe boosts supply chain resilience, creates jobs, ensures fair competition, and supports proportionate public spending while enhancing technological sovereignty.

Overall, the session underlined that IPCEI is not only a funding tool, but a strategic mechanism to secure Europe’s long-term leadership in microelectronics and communication technologies.

Key Takeaways – Session 2 Workshop

The IPCEI ME/CT workshop highlighted the scale, diversity, and concrete impact of the initiative across Europe’s microelectronics and communication technologies value chain. The session showed how IPCEI ME/CT brings together a wide ecosystem of industrial players, research organisations, and public authorities to address shared strategic challenges through close cross-border collaboration.

A strong focus was placed on the four strategic workstreams – Sense, Think, Communicate, and Act – which together cover the full lifecycle of electronic systems, from data capture and processing to connectivity and power actuation. Concrete project examples illustrated how IPCEI ME/CT supports breakthrough technologies, accelerates First Industrial Deployment, and enables industrialisation in areas such as sensors, advanced computing, communication infrastructures, power electronics, and sustainable semiconductor manufacturing.

The workshop also underlined the importance of spillover effects as a core pillar of IPCEI ME/CT. Beyond technological results, projects actively contribute to skills development, education, startup engagement, sustainability, and societal impact. Initiatives such as student hackathons, talent programmes, sustainability summits, and support for female entrepreneurship demonstrated how IPCEI ME/CT strengthens Europe’s innovation ecosystem well beyond individual projects.

Overall, the session confirmed that IPCEI ME/CT is not only delivering technological excellence, but also building long-term European capacity, cooperation, and resilience by aligning industrial ambition with shared European policy goals.

Relive the event!

To relive the highlights of the event, we invite you to watch the EFECS 2025 aftermovie video produced following the forum. More updates, insights, and communications from Chips JU, the event organiser, will be shared in the coming months.