EU joins US-led chip pact France denounced as colonisation

Brussels is preparing to sign onto a Washington-led initiative focused on securing AI chip supply chains, a move that comes barely two weeks after the European Union unveiled a comprehensive tech-sovereignty agenda built on a fundamentally different premise. The decision to join Pax Silica is creating an awkward tension at the heart of EU policy.

The European Union is expected to formally enter the US-led Pax Silica pact, a coalition designed to coordinate AI semiconductor supply chains and align export controls against China. The timing of this decision is notable, as it directly follows a period in which Brussels has been aggressively marketing a vision of technological independence that aims to reduce reliance on foreign suppliers, including those from the United States.

Launched by Washington in December 2025, Pax Silica was established to secure global supply chains for AI semiconductors, critical minerals, and advanced technologies. It also seeks to bind a select group of partners into a unified stance on export controls. The UK, Japan, South Korea, India, and Australia have already become members. Individually, three EU member states,Greece, Finland, and Sweden,have also signed on. Reports indicate that Italy is weighing its own participation, suggesting the pact’s gravitational pull within the bloc was already outpacing any collective decision-making process.

The procedural path for the EU’s entry runs through the bloc’s standard diplomatic machinery. According to Agence Europe, member states’ permanent representatives were expected to authorize the European Commission to join the pact on behalf of the entire EU. The Commission had been pushing for a unified bloc-wide sign-up rather than a fragmented approach, arguing that coordinating with like-minded partners on supply chains would create new opportunities for European firms.

That argument has not won universal support. France has emerged as the most vocal skeptic, framing Pax Silica as an attempt to colonize Europe and a direct contradiction of the sovereignty agenda the EU has been promoting. Paris has disputed claims that it single-handedly blocked the Commission’s negotiating mandate, but it has made no secret of its discomfort. The core objection is not about chips themselves, but about who sets the rules for the technological stack Europe will depend on.

This tension is structural rather than rhetorical. The same Brussels institutions that champion reducing reliance on non-European technology have concluded that, when it comes to advanced semiconductors, going it alone is not a viable option. Europe simply does not produce enough of the chips that matter most, and the existing supply chain is anchored in the US and East Asia.

From one perspective, joining a coordinated bloc is the realistic version of sovereignty: shape the rules from inside rather than be shaped by them from outside. Critics see the opposite. They argue that signing the declaration locks Europe into an American-defined AI stack and export-control regime, trading autonomy for a seat at a table Washington built and continues to chair.

The architecture of Pax Silica is broad, covering semiconductors, computing infrastructure, energy, logistics, and critical minerals. Membership therefore touches most of the essential inputs to a modern AI economy. Either way, the direction is set. The bloc that spent the spring talking up strategic autonomy is now poised to coordinate its most strategic technology with Washington. What that means for Europe’s own chip ambitions, and for the firms hoping the Commission was right about those openings, remains to be written.