Amsterdam’s enterprise court will consider today whether the Chinese owners of chip manufacturer Nexperia deliberately undermined the business in order to move its operations out of Europe.

The Dutch government sparked a diplomatic row last September when caretaker economic affair minister Vincent Karremans placed the company under state supervision by invoking a previously unused law dating from 1952.

China retaliated by blocking the export of Nexperia-made transistors, stalling production lines in the European car industry for several weeks.

Deliveries resumed after Karremans suspended the government’s intervention in November, saying he was no longer concerned that the company was planning to relocate its headquarters from Nijmegen.

The Court of Appeal’s enterprise chamber is considering evidence in the case on Wednesday to decide if a further investigation is needed into its affairs. A ruling is not expected immediately.

The court has already suspended Nexperia’s executive director, Zhang Xuezheng, appointed a former director who has a casting vote and placed the shares owned by Xueheng’s company Wingtech under administrative control.

Xuezheng, known as Wing, acquired Nexpedia in 2019. The company makes transistors in bulk which are used in European-manufactured cars, phones and solar panels.

Nexperia was also placed on a trade blacklist by the US government last year, around the time the case first came to court, but the Dutch government denied it had acted under pressure from Washington.

“Dangerous for Europe”

Karremans said he had acted after seeing intelligence that the company planned to transfer its manufacturing and expertise from Europe to China, with the loss of personnel and intellectual property rights.

He told the Guardian in an interview that it would have made European manufacturing fully dependent on China, which would have been “dangerous for Europe”.

Wing has denied the allegations and is demanding €8 billion in damages for the Dutch government. His company has accused the Dutch authorities of political interference in corporate governance and called on the government to “stop meddling in the judicial process”.