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Finbarr Bermingham

The European Commission wants to force EU member states to remove Chinese companies Huawei Technologies and ZTE from its mobile networks, as part of a sweeping new cybersecurity act unveiled on Tuesday.
While the bloc’s executive arm has recommended that capitals weed equipment from those providers from their 5G networks since 2020, citing cybersecurity risks, only 13 of 27 have so far acted on it, commission sources said. This marks the first time Brussels has attempted to make their removal mandatory.
The new proposal would force capitals to comply within three years of adoption, although the legislation itself would first have to be approved by the countries themselves.
If approved, it could be the tip of the iceberg for Huawei, ZTE and other Chinese operators, should China be designated as a cybersecurity threat under criteria the commission published on Tuesday.
If a country is listed as a threat, its companies would then be considered off-bounds in sensitive sectors including connected vehicles, electricity and water supply and storage, cloud computing, medical devices, space services and semiconductors, the proposal shows.




Given Beijing’s focus on the promotion of “new productive forces”, many of which fall within those sectors, further frictions in the EU-China relationship could be expected.
Criteria for listing include whether the country has been linked to cyberattacks, hacking or organised cyber campaigns; whether EU institutions or EU-wide security assessments have raised concerns about risks linked to that country; and whether its laws force companies to secretly report software or hardware weaknesses to the state before those weaknesses are made public or fixed, especially if they may be exploited.
Countries where there is no independent judiciary to challenge government actions or effective democratic oversight could also be punished, the draft legislation says. A country need only meet one of the criteria to be considered.
Huawei and ZTE are not named in the proposed regulation, just as they were not publicly named in the original 2020 5G toolbox that recommended their removal. In 2023, however, frustrated by slow progress, the commission went public with its concerns about the vendors.
“We cannot predefine who would be there, but obviously the market has not changed since the proposed toolbox,” a senior EU official said on Tuesday.
A second confirmed that the “commission has a clear line of travel and the 5G toolbox is still here, we have not unnamed these two entities”.
For the other sensitive sectors named, the process would start afresh. Nothing is presupposed, said the sources, although given the history of EU complaints about Beijing’s cyber activity, it is expected that many in Europe will push for its inclusion.


Asked whether the United States fell into the threat category given its recent heel turn under President Donald Trump, one of the officials said: “We have got candidates [for the list] – the citizens in the US are our friends, we have no desire to escalate with our friends.”
If excluded, companies would have a right to appeal. Member states who do not abide by the adopted law – for example, if a capital did not remove Huawei from its 5G network – would face infringement procedures that could end up in court.
But officials said that the act did not mandate compensation packages for countries who would be forced to replace Huawei or ZTE in their networks with providers considered to be more secure.
Last year, Bloomberg reported that Germany is considering using public funds to pay Deutsche Telekom AG and other telecoms operators to replace Huawei kit.
The cybersecurity push comes amid an uptick in malicious attacks on the EU. There were 77 state-sponsored cyberattacks in 2025, the commission said, with an increase of 22 per cent in cyberattacks in the second quarter of 2025 compared with a year earlier. These attacks cost the bloc almost a third of a trillion euros (around US$391 billion), the commission said.
Henna Virkkunen, the EU’s tech chief, said the threats represented a “strategic risk to our democracy, economy and way of life”.
“With the new cybersecurity package, we will have the means in place to better protect our critical ICT supply chains but also to combat cyberattacks decisively,” she added on Tuesday.
Huawei said it would continue to provide secure and trusted products and services “as a legally operating company in Europe”.
“A legislative proposal to limit or exclude non-EU suppliers based on country of origin, rather than factual evidence and technical standards, violates the EU’s basic legal principles of fairness, non-discrimination and proportionality, as well as its WTO obligations,” it said in a statement.
“We will closely monitor the subsequent development of the legislative process and reserve all rights to safeguard our legitimate interests.”


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European Commission plan would make vendor removals mandatory within three years and allow broader curbs if China is deemed a cyber risk


European Commission plan would make vendor removals mandatory within three years and allow broader curbs if China is deemed a cyber risk.


EU moves to force Huawei out of networks, opening door to wider Chinese tech bans

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}European Commission plan would make vendor removals mandatory within three years and allow broader curbs if China is deemed a cyber risk

European Commission plan would make vendor removals mandatory within three years and allow broader curbs if China is deemed a cyber risk