In November 2025, the European Chips Skills Academy (ECSA) brought together its full consortium, strategic partners, and Student Ambassadors at Infineon’s Villach site in Austria for a two-day in-person meeting dedicated to one central question: how Europe builds, sustains, and scales the semiconductor workforce of the future.

The meeting marked a key milestone for ECSA, combining high-level strategic dialogue with detailed operational coordination across all Work Packages, while also embedding student voices directly into Europe’s semiconductor ecosystem.

A Strategic Setting for a Strategic Conversation

Hosted at Infineon’s flagship Villach facility, the meeting took place against the backdrop of Europe’s rapidly expanding semiconductor manufacturing and R&D footprint. With major investments underway across the continent, the Villach gathering underscored a clear reality highlighted throughout the meeting: talent availability is now as critical as technology capacity.

This challenge was explored at the highest level during a featured interview between Laith Altimime, President of SEMI Europe, and Sabine Herlitschka, CEO of Infineon Technologies Austria. Their conversation focused on how workforce development will define Europe’s competitiveness in microelectronics over the next decade and reinforced the need for stronger links between industry, education, and policy — precisely the role ECSA is designed to play.

Key strategic progress included:

  • The ECSA Skills Strategy 2025, which highlighted the scale of Europe’s talent gap. Data presented showed that while the EU is expected to need more than 519,000 semiconductor professionals by 2030, only around 382,000 were active in 2023, leaving a major shortfall if no action is taken

  • Despite having 1.2 million STEM graduates per year, only 6% currently enter the semiconductor sector, underlining the urgency of improving attractiveness, visibility, and pathways into the industry

At the operational level, major updates were presented on the ECSA e-learning platform, which is becoming a central hub for Europe’s semiconductor talent pipeline. New features include job offers and internships, blended learning paths, micro-credentials, and community-building tools — positioning the platform as both a learning and career marketplace

Students at the Heart of ECSA

Running in parallel with the consortium meeting, ECSA’s Student Ambassadors gathered in Villach for their annual Ambassador Summit, combining professional development, networking, and a behind-the-scenes tour of Infineon’s operations.

The programme now includes 63 active ambassadors from EU and non-EU universities, who play a growing role in testing courses, supporting events, creating content, and representing ECSA across Europe’s semiconductor ecosystem

Looking Ahead

The Villach meeting showed that ECSA has entered a decisive phase of delivery and scale-up — aligning skills strategy, digital infrastructure, training content, and student engagement into a single European ecosystem.

With Europe’s semiconductor ambitions accelerating, the message from Villach was clear: talent is now the strategic enabler — and ECSA is building the pipeline that will power Europe’s chips future.

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