Taiwan and the EU held high level trade talks last week with chip cooperation at the top of the agenda. In February, the EU unveiled the European Chips Act, with the bloc mentioning Taiwan as one of the "like-minded partners" Europe would like to work with. read more

TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker and Asia's most valuable listed company, flagged a year ago that it was in the early stages of reviewing a potential expansion into Germany but there appears to have been no substantive progress since then.

Chairman Mark Liu told an annual shareholders' meeting said that in Europe, we have relatively fewer customers, but we are still assessing and still do not have any concrete plans.

TSMC is spending $12 billion on chip factories in the United States and is building a factory with Sony Group in Japan to help alleviate the global chip shortage.

Liu said the company was seeing higher costs for its US expansion than estimated. "But we can handle it," he added.

TSMC also said it expects revenue growth of around 30 per cent this year, at the upper end of an earlier forecast, as the chip shortage keeps order books full and prices high.