European chipmakers have not bought any lithography equipment from ASML in 2026, continuing a trend that the company has seen play out over the last few years.

Speaking at an event in Amsterdam earlier this week, Frank Heemskerk, executive vice president of public affairs at ASML, told attendees that because “Europe is not investing and … no chip factories are being built [across the continent],” the company is “selling absolutely nothing in Europe.”

He described the situation as “genuinely worrying,” adding that ASML’s revenue share in Europe currently sits at zero percent, down from one percent in FY2025. The highest European revenue share the Dutch company has posted in recent years was five percent in 2024.

In an effort to address these challenges, Heemskerk said ASML is involved in discussions with politicians, including President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, while looking at how the region can attract more investment and encourage customers to buy locally fabricated chips.

“We need to make sure that some of those buyers – the customers of our customers – start talking much more closely with European manufacturers again,” Heemskerk said. “In areas such as artificial intelligence for industry, for example, there are still plenty of opportunities that Europe can seize. But you have to organize this collectively.”

Netherlands-based ASML is the sole global supplier of EUV (extreme ultraviolet) and High NA EUV lithography machines that are needed to make the most advanced 3nm and 5nm chips.

However, while Heemskerk’s comments reflect ASML’s lack of sales on the continent for high-end equipment, investment has been going into semiconductor manufacturing across Europe.

Infineon and GlobalFoundries are both building chip fabs across Germany, with Intel having also recently pledged to invest €5 billion ($5.7bn) to expand semiconductor production capacity at its Leixlip campus in Ireland.

Meanwhile, in 2024, the European Commission approved a €5 billion state aid package to support TSMC’s ESMC (European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) chip fab in Dresden, Germany. That facility is a collaborative effort between TSMC and NXP, Infineon, and Bosch, with the European trio each owning a 10 percent stake in the plant.

The issue for ASML, though, is that none of these facilities are manufacturing leading-edge chips, meaning they don’t require advanced EUV or High NA EUV tools.

EUV lithography works by using a 13.5nm light to print nanometer-sized transistors on silicon wafers. High NA EUV machines – the most advanced lithography tools available – require less light per exposure than traditional EUV machines, reducing the time required to print each layer and therefore increasing wafer output. However, they also cost around double the amount of the standard EUV machines, with each unit costing approximately $370 million.

Despite weak European sales, ASML is continuing to see strong demand in other geographies. Earlier this month, the company announced that TSMC and Samsung had both committed to using ASML’s High NA EUV tools by the end of the decade.

Following the publication of the Dutch company’s Q2 2026 results, CEO Christophe Fouquet said that in 2027, ASML was “pretty much already close” to receiving all the EUV orders it needs, “this is with us adding about 30 percent capacity for EUV in 2027 versus 2026.”

For 2028, he said that the company had begun exploring an additional 30 percent capacity increase, due, in part, to the “large number of orders from our customers for EUV” that it has already received.