The country’s economy ministry said it would not follow up on the U.S. ban on Chinese telecom equipment makers.
Germany has exposed its dependence on Russia for energy since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This has also made officials wary of a similar dependence on China in terms of trade, which has put exchanges between Berlin and Beijing under close scrutiny.
Germany is also under pressure to take action against Chinese telecom equipment makers after the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last week banned approval of new equipment from companies such as Huawei and ZTE on the grounds that they pose a “threat to U.S. national security.
A strategy document from the German Ministry of Economics suggests in detail that the level of scrutiny of components from certain countries should be checked. The document refers to Germany’s Information Technology Security Act which was introduced in 2020. According to the legislation, individual information technology (IT) components or entire companies could be banned and declared untrusted if vendors make false claims, do not support security audits or fail to report or patch vulnerabilities in a timely manner.
Huawei: Network security has nothing to do with nationality.
Huawei said, “The secure use of the network is independent of the vendor’s country of origin, and can only be ensured through global standards of cooperation between industry and regulators.”