No official conclusions, but initial guidance from Member States following the European Commission's recommendation for Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei.
Adopted at the end of March, this recommendation encourages Member States to conduct a risk analysis before the end of June 2019 to determine whether the Chinese original equipment manufacturer (OEM) technologies pose security risks on the European continent and should therefore be excluded from certain telecommunications infrastructure markets (see EUROPE 12222/23).
At this stage, several Member States have already indicated their conclusions. Belgium does not seem to see any particular problems. The Belgian Centre for Cybersecurity (BCC) has already indicated that it will not issue a negative opinion on the giant Huawei for lack of concrete evidence establishing any threat, despite months of investigation. The BCC does not plan to issue a final report and it will therefore be up to the Belgian Prime Minister to take a position on the basis of these conclusions.
The United Kingdom, on the other hand, reports risks to British telecommunications networks. In that Member State, as we wrote in our columns, the Supervisory Committee of the Cybersecurity Assessment Centre concluded in its fifth annual report that Huawei had not addressed the existing problems and that new ones were now being added, causing "new risks to British telecommunications networks" (see EUROPE 12224/27).
On the German side, the President of the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) told the Financial Times that no equipment supplier could be specifically excluded. According to him, if Huawei fulfils all the conditions relating to telecommunications security and secrecy, it can take part in the competitive bidding of service providers wishing to participate in the deployment of the 5G network in Germany.
It should also be recalled that in France, the ‘Huawei law', which requires prior authorisation for the choice of network equipment for 5G by telecom operators, must be examined by the Senate on 1 July, for entry into force in September. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)