Chinese telecom giants Huawei and ZTE pose a risk to EU securitywarned the European Commission on Thursday, which announced that it will stop using services that depend on these companies.
“The Commission considers that Huawei and ZTE represent in fact materially higher risks than other 5G providersthe executive arm of the EU said in a statement.
For this reason, Brussels urged Member States that have not yet implemented the recommendations to adopt them “urgently” and advanced that, in his case, will take “measures to prevent exposure of its corporate communications to mobile networks using Huawei and ZTE as providers.”
For his part, the head of Industry of the EU, Thierry Breton, indicated that the decision of some EU countries to ban Huawei and ZTE equipment in their telecommunications networks is in line with the bloc’s guidelines and is justified.
“The Commission has just published a communication confirming that the decisions taken by some Member States to restrict or completely exclude Huawei and ZTE from their 5G networks are justified,” Breton said at a press conference.
“We cannot afford to maintain critical dependencies that could become a weapon against our interests. It would be a critical vulnerability and too serious a risk to our common security.”, affirmed Brton, European Commissioner for the Internal Market.
Reporters walk past a 5G sign on an underground coal surface where Huawei’s 5G base stations are deployed in Shaanxi, China (Reuters/File)
In recent weeks, Breton had raised concerns that some EU countries still have high-risk components in their 5G backbone and urged them to stick to EU guidelines adopted two years ago.
So far, only a third of the countries that make up the bloc have prohibited the participation of Huawei in critical parts of 5G communications, despite recommendations made by Brussels to exclude high-risk providers from technology investments. “This is very little. And it exposes the collective security of the bloc,” Breton told last week. Financial Times.
Germany, one of the countries that has taken the longest to make a decision regarding the ban on Huawei’s participation, this being one of the main concerns of the EU, has expressed concern about the links between Deutsche Telekom and Huawei.
Earlier this year, Berlin said it was reviewing the use of Chinese components in its 5G infrastructure and whether a law change was necessary.
The latest warnings came at a time of growing concern in the EU over its technological dependence on China, the country’s business practices and the Beijing regime’s human rights record.
For his part, The US accused Huawei in particular of being a criminal company who stole from American companies, violated sanctions against the North Korean regime, and made false statements to the FBI. For this reason, Washington has urged its allies to ban the company from its critical communications infrastructure.
With information from AFP, EFE, Reuters