City could lose out to Asia or U.S. without more funding One of Europe’s leading clusters for semiconductor research and manufacturing may be unable to compete globally for new high-tech investors without greater financial support from the European Union.Dresden, in Germany, could lose out to high-tech clusters in Asia or the U.S. on opportunities to attract new chip fabrication plants (fabs) if it doesn’t receive greater funding from Brussels, Stephan Goessl, a spokesman for the state government of Saxony, said Monday.Goessl’s comments came the same day that Intel announced plans to build a US$2.5 billion chip plant in Dalian, China. Like other cities in the former East Germany, Dresden has seen E.U. subsidies for industrial development decline sharply as a result of poorer countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary joining the trading bloc. Up until 2002, eastern German states could apply for funds to subsidize high-tech investments up to 35 percent. That percentage dropped to 12.4 percent through the end of last year and is currently hovering at 11.4 percent.Georg Milbradt, minister-president of the German state of Saxony, has been holding talks with officials in Brussels about creating an industrial development strategy that would, among other things, provide funds to clusters like Dresden to attract investments in key technologies, according to Goessl.Big-name chip makers like AMD and Infineon Technologies AG are among the 200 companies that have established research labs and production facilities in Dresden, often called “Silicon Saxony” by its supporters. Milbradt is particularly interested in convincing Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) to build a planned new chip factory in Dresden, where the company already has production facilities.But the German politician isn’t alone.New York state has also offered AMD more than $1 billion in subsidies to build the new chip factory in the U.S. “We’re not asking the E.U. to pour funds on everything, but rather to target funding on technology sectors in which it wants to play a role globally,” Goessl said. Technology Industry