The reason is simple. Europeans don't want to work in chip factories.
Many, many Europeans do work in factories. Just ask the Germans.
What's wrong with working in chip factories anyway? They produce some of the highest margin products in the world and since they are highly automated, working in a chip factory requires certain knowledge and education on physics, quality assurance, automation, material science, and certainly give you experience that makes you a valuable worker with future perspects rather than a replaceable cog in a dead end job as is the case for the Europeans working in most other factories that are a few steps away from being off-shored to lower cost areas.
Regular users would generally stay for several hours to make it worth it. No break, water, toilet or food, probably come in with an empty bladder and empty stomach and stay the whole day.
From what I have read, it requires specialised training and intermediate if not advanced level skills and relatively high level of education. You work on the same machines for years and they pay is not necessarily that high compared to the trouble that you put in.
In fact, even in Taiwan the challenge is that people often switch to chip design or software instead. This definitely gets harder as people age.
Asia has what some would call almost slave labor and a complete lack of care for workers. Many countries don’t care about pollution either.
US and European countries will gladly clean up manufacturing at home while shifting to countries who could care less about employees or environmental impacts.
I could believe EU has some stricter environmental regulations than both, though
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/407/503/119...