MP Emanuele Loperfido is part of the Italian parliamentary delegation currently visiting Taipei to strengthen political, industrial, and economic relations with Taiwan, with a focus on semiconductors, advanced technology, and academic cooperation.
Why it matters: The mission aligns with Italy’s broader strategy to consolidate ties with technologically advanced partners who share Western values. According to MP Loperfido, reached by Decode39 by phone in Taipei:
- “This was a parliamentary diplomacy mission to consolidate relations between Italy and Taiwan.”
- “Of fundamental importance is the path that has been traced to consolidate relations between universities and between companies, including interactions among technology parks, since they develop highly strategic interests.
- ”All of this follows the line of what Taiwan is trying to do, namely involving an increasing number of Western companies so that the West has every interest in ensuring that the status quo is maintained.”
The science park. The delegation visited the Hsinchu Science Park, the global heart of the semiconductor industry, home to more than 580 high-tech companies employing around 177,000 people, accounting for 70% of global semiconductor production and generating approximately $1.5 trillion in annual revenue, making it a central hub of the world’s technology supply chain.
- “When I entered the science park, I read a striking sentence, namely: ‘Everything that we handle daily, from smartphones to smartwatches, from televisions to cars, a significant part of the technology has certainly been made in Taiwan.’ The reason is quickly explained. Here, there is 50% of global semiconductor production and 90% of the most advanced microprocessors,” said Loperfido.
- According to the Italian MP, this means an economy in which Italy, too, is investing in artificial intelligence, and where increasingly fundamental components are present.
- “Dealing with Taiwanese partners is significant because they pay close attention to respecting intellectual property, unlike their Chinese counterparts. Therefore, it is right to continue developing political, commercial, and cultural relations with this world, which, from a technological point of view, is undoubtedly more advanced.”
By the numbers:
- Italy–Taiwan trade: USD 5.5 billion
- Growth over the past five years: 15-fold increase compared to the previous five-year period
- Taiwanese FDI in Italy: USD 2.2 billion
- Taiwan’s economy: 14th in the world, 6th in Asia, with 3,1% of average GDP growth over the past decade and 7,3% Forecast GDP growth for 2025.
Zoom in: Italy’s opportunity. MP Loperfido underlines: “This means that relations are growing more and more, and therefore it is also the task of the Italian system to safeguard the increase in exchanges. There is a Taiwanese company that has invested in Novara to build an ad hoc plant, which is fundamental because it helps strengthen our economy in the advanced technology sector, which for us can also be very useful in the medical field, where Italy is powerful.”
- He adds that the objective is “to give a boost to those collaborations that can exist between universities, technology parks, and research areas to develop scholarships, cultural exchanges, and to provide mutual benefit both to the research side and to the economic side.”
What’s next:
- Defence was not officially discussed, but remains in the background: potential industrial synergies; cybersecurity and countering hacker attacks (Taiwan faces around 24 million cyberattacks per year, a body of know-how that could also be helpful for Italy).
