The US Urges Europe Countries To Follow Suit Against Huawei

The US has shown its protest against Huawei, and now it wants others to join hands in this lawsuit.

On Tuesday, Reuters reported that the US State Department is urging European countries not to use equipment produced by Huawei in a time when the countries are heading to launch 5G.

According to the publication, US officials, the Belgian government and representatives of the European Commission had a meeting in which the US warned the others against the Chinese government's use of Huawei devices to spy.

A State Department spokesman stated:

The tension between the Chinese company Huawei and the US has escalated for over a month now, which went extremely dramatic when Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada. Not only Huawei CFO is facing extradition to the US, but the company also got slapped with two indictments by the US with a total of 23 charges. Before Meng’s arrest, the US had consistently warned about the Chinese giant for a year, fearing that the close relationship it had with the Chinese government would result in espionage.

Despite its awareness of the threat, Europe doesn’t think that shutting Huawei out is the best thing it can do to tackle the problem. As revealed by government sources, Germany wants to make sure that thorough security measures are done in time and a banning order may not be the way.

Federation of German Industry head, Dieter Kempf, said that banning Huawei would limit the choice of vendors and have an influence on costs. More importantly, that would lead to political consequences, including China’s revenge towards German businesses.

The Italian government on Thursday claimed that it would not ban Huawei or any Chinese rivals like ZTE in its 5G rollout.

Huawei has gained its own place on the European market, not only in network infrastructures but also phone production. However, there have been challenges to the company in this region even before US warnings.

UK telecoms provider BT said in December that it would stop using Huawei technology for its 4G infrastructure by 2020 and promised to exclude the company’s equipment from its 5G core. EU technology chief Andrus Ansip and GCHQ – the spy agency of UK – warned about security and industry risks from Huawei as well as other Chinese firms. Nevertheless, no one has shown such determination as the US, except for Japan and Australia.

No matter what the EU decision is, the urge from the US to this market only increase the tension between the pair.

Huawei hasn’t spoken about the matter yet.