To walk the talk, EU Commissioner Thierry Breton announces a plan to completely replace Huawei and ZTE on his own network. Now the Member States.

Since 2020, the European Commission has been asking its member states not to grant Huawei, ZTE and other Chinese telecom equipment suppliers a place in the 5G network. Only a third would have responded to this call; Countries like Germany continue to delay the decision. Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton reiterated the importance of excluding “high-risk suppliers” in a speech to Parliament yesterday.

“We cannot afford to have critical infrastructure become a weapon against our interests. “That would be too critical a vulnerability and too great a risk to our security,” Breton said menacingly. The European Commission wants to lead by example by removing any Huawei or ZTE components within its own internal network and replacing them with an approved vendor.

Expensive joke

The registry notes that this could be a costly hoax. In 2022, the US government had already investigated how much it would cost to completely oust Huawei and ZTE from the network. The estimate was 5.6 billion euros. In addition, disabling core components can also affect the stability of the network.

Since not all member states have yet banned Huawei unlocking, the European Commission is considering enforcing it by law. The network’s doors may be closed, but there’s still a place for Huawei at the research table. A recent investigation by the Financial Times revealed that Huawei will receive €4 million for research projects, in addition to insights into critical infrastructure, which the commission wants to avoid at all costs.

“Discriminatory Judgment”

Of course, Huawei is not satisfied with Breton’s dig. In a statement to our editors, the company says it feels unfairly targeted by the actions the European Commission intends to take. “The public designation of an individual company as a ‘high-risk seller’ without a legal basis violates the principles of free trade.” This is clearly not based on a verified, transparent, objective and technical assessment.”

“We understand the concern of the European Commission to protect cybersecurity. However, restrictions or exclusions due to discriminatory judgments harbor considerable economic and social risks. It would hamper innovation and distort the EU market.

Huawei backs this claim with a study by Oxford Economics, according to which an exclusion could increase the investment costs for 5G by tens of billions of euros. Huawei also opened a cybersecurity center in Brussels a few years ago, where it makes its network technology available for testing and auditing.

Updated at 11:57 AM with a response from Huawei.