(Bloomberg) -- ASML Holding NV Chief Executive Officer Christophe Fouquet said European countries like the Netherlands must not restrict inbound migration if they want to remain competitive in key industries.
“We have built our company with more than 100 nationalities,” Fouquet said on stage at the Bloomberg Tech Summit in London on Tuesday. “Bringing talent from everywhere has been an absolute condition for success, and this has to continue,” he added.
The Netherlands’ new cabinet led by far-right lawmaker Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party has vowed to implement the country’s strictest-ever migration policies. It asked the European Union to opt out of its migration agreement and vowed to stem the influx of international students, strengthen border controls, freeze decisions on asylum applications and threatened to deport people.
The Netherlands, once considered one of Europe’s most open economies, has faced a backlash from corporates that view the Dutch business climate becoming less attractive. Several of the companies that are heavily reliant on foreign workers, including ASML, chipmaker NXP Semiconductors, dredger Boskalis and consumer giant Unilever have previously expressed their dismay at the new cabinet’s migration policy.
To build a company like ASML, “you need to have access to capital, access to people, access to energy and you need to have a place to build your factory,” Fouquet said. “And if you want to compete with other countries like China and the US, not only you need to have those conditions, but those conditions have to be as good as possible so that you can be competitive.”
The world’s largest semiconductor companies depend on ASML, which is the world’s sole producer of cutting-edge lithography machines, to produce most advanced chips that power everything from Apple’s smartphones to Nvidia’s AI accelerators. Fouquet warned that ASML’s success should not be taken “for granted.”
Still, the Veldhoven-based company isn’t planning to move out of the Netherlands, Fouquet said. ASML will only grow its operations abroad “based on the activity we have in the different countries,” he said.
Earlier this year, the Dutch government pledged to spend €2.5 billion ($2.7 billion) on infrastructure and education projects in the Eindhoven region to prevent ASML from expanding abroad.
“We don’t at all consider to move a large part of our operation outside of the Netherlands, not at all,” Fouquet said.
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