ASML sold 91 lithography systems in the second quarter, and Europe accounted for 0% of the €6.6 billion in system sales. That pairing is the useful part of a striking new claim from the Dutch company's public-affairs chief. Europe can announce funds, approve factories and write semiconductor strategies. Orders for the machines that equip those factories show whether new capacity is moving from paper to cleanroom.
Frank Heemskerk, ASML's executive vice president for global public affairs, put it more bluntly: "We are not selling anything in Europe at all." His comments, reported by NL Times, landed three months after the European Commission proposed Chips Act 2.0. The proposal is meant to reduce dependence on suppliers outside the bloc and support more advanced chip production inside it. For now, ASML's sales map points in the other direction.
What the zero covers
The figure needs a boundary. ASML's second-quarter investor presentation reports net system sales by the location to which equipment was shipped. South Korea took 43%, Taiwan 30%, China 14%, the United States 9% and Japan 4%. Those shares add to 100%. Europe does not appear in the chart.
This is a system-sales measure, rather than a count of every euro ASML earns in the region. The company also made €2.8 billion from service and field options for machines already installed around the world. Its total quarterly net sales were €9.3 billion. European fabs continue to operate, and ASML itself designs and assembles machines in the Netherlands. The zero says that Europe generated none of the quarter's reported revenue from newly sold systems. It does not erase the equipment, research centers or mature-node production already there.
The unit count gives the percentage physical weight. ASML reported 86 new systems and five used systems sold during the quarter. Sixteen were extreme-ultraviolet, or EUV, machines. EUV represented 57% of net system sales, about €3.8 billion. The technology uses 13.5-nanometer light to print the fine patterns needed for the most advanced logic and memory chips. A region missing from that shipment chart is missing a quarter's worth of new lithography spending across every class of machine ASML reports.
The demand is visible elsewhere
ASML is not waiting for a market. Its Q2 revenue rose to €9.3 billion, with €2.9 billion in net income, and the company lifted its 2026 sales forecast to between €43 billion and €45 billion. Management tied the stronger outlook to spending on AI infrastructure and customer plans to add logic and memory capacity. It plans to raise its 2027 production capacity for low numerical aperture EUV systems by 30% from a 2026 base of roughly 65 machines. It is planning the same increase for deep-ultraviolet immersion systems from a base of about 130.
That expansion is following customer commitments, according to ASML's results. The location chart shows where those commitments turned into Q2 revenue. South Korea and Taiwan together represented 73% of net system sales. Both are home to manufacturers building leading logic and memory capacity. Europe has the company that supplies EUV lithography, yet the immediate demand for its factory equipment is concentrated thousands of kilometers away.
The distinction matters because semiconductor strength is often discussed as though owning one indispensable supplier makes the rest of the chain local. ASML gives Europe influence over an unusually scarce manufacturing technology. The chips produced with its machines still come mainly from fabs near the customers buying those machines. Equipment leadership and fabrication capacity sit at different points in the chain. The Q2 chart makes the distance between them easy to see.
The first Chips Act was already behind schedule
The original European Chips Act entered into force in September 2023 with a target of reaching 20% of global semiconductor production by value in 2030. An audit published in 2025 found that the policy had prompted action but was very unlikely to reach that target. The European Court of Auditors projected an 11.7% share in 2030, only modestly above 9.8% in 2022.
The funding headline was large. The auditors counted at least €43 billion in policy-driven investment expected under the act, with a comparable amount in announced private investment. Yet only about €4.5 billion was managed directly by the EU. Delivery depended heavily on national governments and private companies. The audit also warned that delays or cancellation of a single large fab could materially alter the result because so much investment is concentrated in a small number of projects.
That warning explains why ASML's zero is more revealing than a running total of announced support. A state-aid approval can sit months or years before construction, tool installation and production. Some supported projects strengthen materials, packaging or research rather than wafer fabrication, all useful parts of the chain that do not automatically generate a lithography order. The policy can be active while system sales remain absent.
The auditors named energy costs, access to raw materials, skills, environmental requirements and international competition among the factors outside the Commission's direct control. Heemskerk's complaint reaches the same point from the supplier's side: other governments are trying to attract investment, while ASML sees no current European machine sales. Neither observation proves that every European project has failed. Together, they show how far the bloc is from making new fab construction routine.
Chips Act 2.0 tries to create customers
The Commission's Chips Act 2.0 proposal, published in June, changes some of the emphasis. It calls for permit decisions within 12 months, a wider state-aid route for first-of-a-kind projects across the supply chain, and a process for designating strategic projects. It also proposes demand accelerators that would connect chipmakers with industries likely to buy their products, plus procurement rules intended to direct more economic activity into the EU.
Demand is the part that matters for ASML's map. A subsidized fab still needs a durable market for its output, reliable power, trained workers and enough expected utilization to justify years of construction. The proposal links chip demand to planned AI data centers and cloud infrastructure. In a separate initiative, the Commission has outlined an EU plant combining advanced-node manufacturing with chiplet packaging, with an estimated €20 billion to €40 billion in public and private investment. An expression-of-interest process may come before any formal call for proposals.
That last sentence is the gap in miniature. A possible call can test industry appetite. It cannot place a lithography purchase order. The proposal still has to pass through the EU legislative process, and a factory of that size would take years to build. Europe's Q2 absence could therefore coexist with serious projects that have not reached the equipment-buying stage. The numbers to watch are the conversion points: final financing, construction starts and named tool orders.
Europe does not need every kind of fab
A 0% quarter can invite an oversized conclusion. Europe remains strong in automotive and industrial semiconductors, research, chipmaking equipment and materials. Many of those products use established process nodes rather than the smallest geometries. Supply resilience can improve through more capacity in power chips, sensors, packaging and other components without copying the manufacturing mix of Taiwan or South Korea.
Chips Act 2.0 acknowledges that split by supporting mainstream as well as advanced chips. The harder policy choice is deciding which dependencies warrant an expensive local answer. A leading-edge fab aimed at AI accelerators serves a different market from a silicon-carbide plant serving vehicles and power systems. Bundling both under a single market-share target makes activity easy to count but obscures which shortages Europe could withstand.
ASML's next regional chart will offer a cleaner signal. One European shipment quarter would not prove the policy is working, just as one zero quarter does not settle the decade. Repeated zeros would be harder to explain away while ASML raises capacity for customers elsewhere. Watch where its new systems ship, then compare that trail with the projects that have cleared financing and broken ground. That is where Europe's semiconductor plans become factories, or remain plans.