EU considers mandatory ban on using Huawei to build 5G

June 6 (Reuters) – The European Union is considering a mandatory ban on member-states using companies that might pose a security risk in their 5G networks, including China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

The move comes as a response to increasing concerns in Brussels about certain national governments delaying action on the matter, the officials told the newspaper.

A European Commission spokesperson did not comment on the FT report when contacted by Reuters, but said it is working with member states to monitor the implementation of a toolbox of security measures.

A second progress report on the toolbox implementation is in the making and will be published in the coming weeks, after the first one from July 2020, the spokesperson said.

Huawei did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

In 2020, the EU said member-states can either restrict or exclude high-risk 5G vendors such as Huawei from core parts of their telecoms network, and resisted pressure back then from Washington for an outright ban on Chinese telcos.

In a meeting last Friday, the EU’s internal market commissioner Thierry Breton informed telecoms ministers that only a third of EU countries had implemented Huawei bans in critical areas, the report said.

As guidance fell short of a ban in 2020, EU could introduce a mandatory ban on companies deemed to present a security risk, should member-states such as Germany continue to delay, the newspaper added.

Germany has been considering banning certain components from Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE (000063.SZ) in its telecoms network, a government source told Reuters in March, in a potentially significant move to address security concerns.

Reporting by Akriti Sharma in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Kanjyik Ghosh and Yana Gaur; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Pooja Desai

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.