Lombardy joins the Alliance of European Semiconductor Regions

(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor) - The Lombardy Region has made it official to join the European Semiconductor Regions Alliance (Esra), which groups together European regions characterised by a strong presence of semiconductor industries, including suppliers, all of which are very active in development and research. The decision was taken on the initiative of Lombardy's assessor for Economic Development, Guido Guidesi, and was announced in Turin at the Alliance's annual plenary, which was attended by all the European regions that are members of the association, including Baden-Wuerttemberg, Bavaria, Saxony and Catalonia. For Italy, until now there was only Piedmont, which took over the presidency with the plenary, joined by Lombardy. For the Region, this membership marks an important step in consolidating its position as a leader in the microelectronics sector and in strengthening collaborations throughout Europe: a further step that is part of Councillor Guidesi's strategy of forging alliances at European level in the area of business support.

Faced with the fact that it is at EU level that the decisions that have the greatest impact on the lives of citizens are taken, the manufacturing regions of Europe have a better chance of asserting their claims than the European Commission if they are united. Aware of this, Councillor Guidesi has been working for about two years to forge alliances, agreements and build joint projects with the European regions most similar to Lombardy in economic terms. Lombardy is already a member of the Automotive Regions Alliance (Ara), of which Guidesi will assume the presidency from January 2025, and of the European Chemical Regions Network (Ecrn), of which the councillor is currently president. Again with a European perspective, in recent months Guidesi has carried out missions to Munich, Leipzig, Stuttgart, Pamplona, Lyon and, of course, Brussels to seek support and build relationships. With the same goals in mind, an alliance was signed in recent weeks between Lombardy and Bavaria to intensify mutual relations and join forces on common positions with regard to relations with the European Union.

On the semiconductor front, Lombardy and Piedmont have for the past two years, also together with Liguria, been pursuing institutional collaboration on specific topics such as aerospace, the energy industry, the logistics supply chain, and precisely automotive and microelectronics. This joint work of the Northwest Industrial Triangle has already seen several meetings between the three regions and concrete activities in these specific topics. During the plenary session in Turin, Councillors Guido Guidesi and Andrea Tronzano (Piedmont) announced their intention, to be extended to Liguria, to organise a meeting in January between ecosystems in the semiconductor sector in which companies, research centres, clusters and territorial districts will participate.