LEUVEN, Belgium — The rest of the world including the U.S. relies on Europe for essential chipmaking technology, officials and executives said Monday.

The European Commission’s top tech official and chief executives of Belgian chips R&D centre Imec and Dutch chips tool supplier ASML made the comments at the inauguration of a €2.5 billion chips research hub in Leuven, close to Brussels.

“It’s true that we do have some of the key technologies, like ASML, that everyone is dependent [on] globally,” the European Commission’s Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen told POLITICO in an interview on the sidelines, in reference to the Dutch chips giant.

While she said the EU has no plans to weaponize those strengths, she said it’s “important to realize that we also have that kind of strengths that others don’t have.”

ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet highlighted the success of the company’s chip printing machines that use extreme ultraviolet light to print chips, which he described as the machine that “the entire world would like to get.”

The comments signal an effort to counter the narrative of Europe’s overreliance on U.S. technology, in noting that the bloc has leverage if other regions choose to weaponize supply chains.

Imec’s CEO Luc van den Hove said the EU “should create kind of reverse dependencies towards European technology,” adding that ASML is already an example of that.

The research hub that opened Monday is a result of a 2022 effort by the EU to boost the homegrown chips industry via a Chips Act. The Commission provided €700 million in funding, the government of Belgium’s northern region of Flanders €750 million, and industry partners, such as ASML, the remainder of the investment.

The EU’s executive is preparing for a second Chips Act, tentatively scheduled for the end of March.