Belgian Representative to Taiwan Matthieu Branders has called for closer cooperation with Taiwan in developing talent for the semiconductor industry and highlighted growing opportunities in the clean energy sector.
Relations between Taiwan and Belgium have been strong over the years, particularly in technology, trade and energy, Branders said in a recent interview.
Taiwan and Belgium are collaborating “on so many sectors of the future — not only semiconductors, but also life sciences [and] energy,” he said. “It is very interesting to see that we are really facing the same challenges and addressing them together.”
Photo: CNA
Branders described the semiconductor partnership between Taiwan and Belgium — particularly the collaboration between the National Science and Technology Council, and Belgium’s Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC) — as a cornerstone of bilateral relations.
Taiwan and Belgium made a “crazy bet” in the 1980s to develop semiconductors amid the decline of traditional industries, and both maintained a competitive edge in the sector, Branders said.
Such cooperation has become even more crucial, as the EU has identified chips as strategic assets and pledged to double the bloc’s share of global semiconductor manufacturing from 10 percent to 20 percent by 2030, he added.
“Economic security has become a major theme... It is essential to be able to build [a] certain level of strategic autonomy,” he said.
Going forward, Taiwan and Belgium could collaborate on talent incubation, as the EU scales up its chip development and manufacturing capacity to reach its goal of “technology sovereignty,” Branders said.
“[The] challenge that we face in Belgium, Europe and Taiwan is the talent,” Branders said. “I think [this is] where the [bilateral] relationship could evolve.”
About 500 Taiwanese go to Belgium every year for studies or research, and about half study or specialize in electrical engineering, he added.
Belgium is also positioning itself as a key partner for Taiwan in energy transition, Branders said.
Despite Belgium’s recent policy shift on the use of nuclear energy, the development of alternative sources continues, particularly offshore wind energy and hydrogen power, he said.
Hydrogen is “certainly a subject where we have expertise and where there could be room for collaboration,” he added.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS