Summary: Dutch trade minister Sjoerd Sjoerdsma visited Washington to oppose the MATCH Act, which would extend export controls to ASML’s DUV immersion tools. The article reports that China accounts for about 19 percent of system sales, while permitted DUV purchases are roughly a fifth of expected 2026 revenue. The related EUV allegation remains contested because no public proof has been shown and ASML denies the machine ever reached China.
TechCrunch carried the news on June 24, 2026: Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, the Netherlands’ trade minister, has spent this week in Washington sitting down with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and a string of lawmakers. His brief was singular — stop a piece of U.S. legislation that could inflict grievous damage on ASML. Never before has Europe confronted Washington’s China-centered chip export-control campaign in such blunt, face-to-face fashion.
The firm in the crossfire is ASML: at roughly $700 billion it is the most valuable listed company in Europe, and it alone builds the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines without which cutting-edge AI chips cannot be made. China buys about 19% of its system sales. Once the meetings wrapped, Sjoerdsma told Bloomberg: “It’s exceptional that I’m coming here to broadly outline our concerns to Congress,” adding, “The stakes for the Netherlands may be very high.”
A Minister on Capitol Hill: Lobbying America Against Its Own Bill
Watching a country’s trade minister cross the Atlantic to argue, inside the U.S. Capitol, against a bill written by American lawmakers — diplomatic practice offers almost no precedent for it. When it happened sharpened the drama: the administration and Congress were turning the screws on ASML at the same time. Across a series of meetings, Commerce Secretary Lutnick had confided to senior ASML executives his worry that one of the company’s most advanced EUV machines “may have ended up in China.” On the legislative side, a bipartisan bill stands ready to stretch the restrictions over the DUV tools ASML is still permitted to ship to China. Choosing that precise moment to go public, Sjoerdsma made clear that the Netherlands has finished complying in silence. Bloomberg added a procedural note: for the bill to become law, it would most likely need to ride inside a bigger piece of legislation.
Inside the MATCH Act: Sealing the Final Outlet
The bill rattling The Hague goes by the name MATCH Act (H.R. 8170). Put forward in April 2026, it has already survived a key committee, and its aim is to bring ASML’s deep ultraviolet (DUV) immersion lithography machines inside the export-control net. Today’s rules have barred the most advanced EUV systems from sale to China since the first Trump presidency; the older-generation DUV tools China is allowed to buy trace back to first shipments roughly ten years ago, and those permitted purchases equal about a fifth of what ASML expects to book as 2026 revenue. Do the arithmetic and the endpoint is stark: should the bill pass, ASML’s equipment business in China shrinks to almost nothing — a body blow at the existential level for a company that counts China among its largest single markets. No full House or Senate vote has taken place yet, and the Trump administration has not taken an official stance either.
One Machine, Two Stories: The EUV Dispute
The pressure campaign traces back to Lutnick telling ASML executives that he suspects an EUV machine “may have ended up in China.” Officials senior enough to speak for the administration told Bloomberg they hold evidence that ASML sent EUV-related components and transport equipment into China, yet that proof has never been displayed — not to Bloomberg’s reporters, and not to ASML either. The company’s rebuttal leaves no room for doubt: “no such machine exists in China and has never existed there.” Speaking in an interview roughly six weeks before, CEO Christophe Fouquet walked through the accounting: every unit the company has ever shipped remains tracked, living either under monitored active operation or already dismantled and returned. Engineers cleared for EUV sit behind an internal wall separating them from everyone else, and the workforce in China was placed, by design, on the restricted side of it. His conclusion is plain: reverse-engineering requires possession, and China never possessed the machine. Not until Washington lays its evidence on the table does this stay a quarrel of claim against denial.
Europe’s Timing: Why the Pushback Lands Now
ASML stands as Europe’s last crown jewel in advanced manufacturing, and around it cluster both the Netherlands’ bargaining chips and its deepest worries. For two years the EU has preached technological sovereignty and sovereign AI, while the steering wheel of export controls never left Washington’s hands — what a Dutch firm may sell, and to which customers, is settled in practice by U.S. statute. This ministerial trip marks the first occasion on which Europe has lodged its objection in formal terms. A further thread invites scrutiny — the conflict-of-interest question. The Commerce Department has pledged as much as $150 million in taxpayer money to xLight, a startup whose technology is viewed as a long-term challenger to ASML’s EUV monopoly. TechCrunch is careful to note that no public evidence ties the xLight stake to the EUV pressure — the two may be wholly unconnected — yet the timing by itself is enough to unsettle Brussels and The Hague.
Three Markers for the Weeks Ahead
Watch three things. One: does the MATCH Act clear a standalone floor vote, or disappear into a broader defense-authorization package? The second route is Washington’s habitual playbook. Two: does the U.S. government ever produce hard proof that an EUV system reached China? Absent that, the allegation remains rumor. Three: does the EU rally behind the Dutch position and try to move export controls from “Washington decides” toward a transatlantic consultation arrangement? For followers of AI governance and export controls, no live case study currently shows the fault lines inside the Western control coalition better than this one.