Sustaining High-Tech Leadership in a Fragmenting World

The high-tech sector in the Netherlands is an important source of growth, supported by innovation-driven ecosystems, globally competitive firms, and deep integration into global value chains (GVCs). Openness exposes the sector—especially high-tech manufacturing—to concentrated value-chain supply and demand shocks. In addition, domestic bottlenecks in labor, grid capacity, permitting, and some aspects of scale-up finance weigh on the sector’s growth. Sustaining high-tech leadership will require easing domestic bottlenecks, leveraging deeper EU integration to support scaling, and strengthening resilience.