The legal proceedings presently unfolding before the Amsterdam Court of Appeal between Dutch semiconductor firm Nexperia and its Chinese parent, Wingtech Technology, mark a watershed moment for European industrial policy. On February 11, the court ordered an independent investigation into Nexperia’s governance — a probe whose findings will take several months to emerge, but whose implications are already plain. The dispute has laid bare the structural vulnerabilities running through Europe’s automotive supply chains, and with them, the strategic consequences of China’s dominance over legacy (or mature-node) semiconductors, typically defined as chips manufactured at process nodes of 28 nanometres and above, considered as foundational chips, the backbone of modern economies. For Europe, the case of Nexperia shows that the era of industrial innocence is over.

For policymakers in Brussels and national capitals, the question is no longer whether Dutch authorities were justified in their intervention in late 2025. It is whether the European Union possesses the institutional capacity – and willingness to use its collective weight – to prevent supply chain dependencies from being weaponised by China.

For all the rhetoric about “strategic autonomy,” which has long been at the heart of the EU’s efforts to boost its geopolitical standing on the global stage, its realisation remains elusive.

This paper uses the Nexperia case to examine Europe’s structural vulnerabilities in legacy semiconductor supply chains. It argues that the crisis is not an isolated incident but a consequence of decades of cost-driven procurement that systematically discounted geopolitical risk. Drawing on the Nexperia case, it assesses the adequacy of Europe’s existing policy instruments — from foreign investment screening to the EU Chips Act — and sets out a concrete policy agenda for how the EU can move from reactive crisis management to durable supply chain resilience, with Taiwan as a central pillar of that strategy.