In a written response dated Wednesday 17 September, the Commissioner for Technological Sovereignty, Henna Virkkunen, expressed her concern about the contract between Spain and the telecommunications company Huawei, saying she feared it “would increase risk of foreign interference”.
The written question tabled in July was submitted by MP Jorge Buxadé Villalba (PfE, Spanish), who warned of the “security implications for judicial and police cooperation, both at national and European level” of the contract won by Huawei “to supply servers to store telephone taps authorised by the Spanish courts”.
In her response, the Commissioner pointed out that the Commission had asked the Member States to ban Huawei from European communications networks in 2023, a request that had been backed up by the 5G ‘toolbox’ initiative (see EUROPE 13202/3).
The European Commission deems Huawei to be a company with a “high risk” of espionage because of its proximity to the Chinese government. The company is also at the heart of a recent case of alleged corruption, involving parliamentary assistants and lobbyists from the Chinese digital giant (see EUROPE 13599/8).
In her written answer, Henna Virkkunen also mentions the forthcoming revision of the European cybersecurity regulation (SCA), which should give the Commission the opportunity to “look more broadly at the security and resilience” [...] of telecommunications infrastructures, in order to “avoid critical dependencies and de-risk”.
See written answer: https://aeur.eu/f/ih3 (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)