The European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, has confirmed that the European Comission will restrict the access of Chinese telemarketers Huawei and ZTE to European Union funding programs and instruments because they represent “materially higher risks than other 5G providers.”
This was stated by the Danish in response to a parliamentary question from the Dutch MEP Bart Groothuis in which he stated that Brussels intends to reflect the risk represented by these telemarketers in the opinion of the Commission “in all relevant EU financing programs and instruments , including all parts of the Horizon Europe framework programme”, the Community’s research and innovation programme.
Last June, the Commission already supported a dozen Member States that decided to exclude these technology companies, something that Brussels considered “absolutely justified” in considering that these are providers that pose serious risks to national security.
The commissioner for the Internal Market and in charge of Telecommunications, Thierry Breton, already announced then that the Community Executive will apply the same prerogatives in its own policy of telecommunications contracting and financing of programs to “avoid exposure to Huawei and ZTE”.
The plan has now been confirmed by Vestager, who has acknowledged that they did not identify themselves, at the time of adopting the work programs of Horizon Europe 2021-2022that those areas in which Huawei participated “endangered the strategic assets, interests, autonomy or security of the EU and, therefore, the expected limitations were not applied.”
“However, following the communication on the application of 5G cybersecurity, in which the Commission considers that Huawei and ZTE represent, in fact, materially higher risks than other providers of 5Gthe Commission intends, in accordance with its powers under the respective governance rules, to reflect this in all relevant EU funding programs and instruments, including all parts of the Horizon Europe framework programme,” the letter states. that the commissioner has sent to the European Parliament.