Huawei has been on the receiving end of some flak, to put it lightly, ever since it was banned by the United States for supposedly spying on behalf of the Chinese government, a claim that has not yet been fully backed. Ever since the ban, the company lost access to Google’s GMS services, rendering its smartphones worthless, at least for the European markets, wherein the company held a decent amount of market share. To add to its woes, the company also lost most of its deals as a 5G networking developer, with all of the infrastructures that Huawei can offer being cancelled due to these previously mentioned concerns. Now, the American government under Joe Biden has started to ease up, but Huawei’s fate still seems bleak at best. In relation to this, earlier today, Romania’s President, Klaus Iohannis signed a Washington-backed bill that effectively bans China and Huawei when it comes to taking part in the development of Romania’s 5G telecommunication networks, on security-related concerns.
What Do We Know About This Bill
Earlier this week, on June 7, the Romanian Senate endorsed the draft law that was initiated by the Government regarding the 5G security regulations, which at the time hinted at the removal of Huawei from the list of suppliers of hardware and software used in Romanian 5G networks, as Economedia.ro had reported. If not certified as a supplier, it was mentioned that the telecom companies would have to remove all the Huawei products from their networks within a span of seven years, with five years allotted for critical and core infrastructure. The senators of AUR, a radical party had tried to send the bill back to the expert commissions, motivating this request by the fact that the legislative initiative was not notified to the European Commission. In recent times, Europe has emerged as a battleground when it comes to the technology ColdWar that is playing out between Beijing and Washington, and Huawei’s European competitors, Ericsson and Nokia, could become a supplier duopoly given that Huawei is shunted out from every market. The bill stems from a 2019 U.S.-Romania memorandum under which the two governments had stated that as part of a risk-based security approach, careful and complete evaluation of 5G vendors is necessary, with those controlled by a foreign government and lacking a transparent ownership structure having been ruled out. In regards to this, Huawei has time and again denied spying for the Chinese state, and, given how no concrete evidence has yet surfaced, the concerns might be a bit too excessive.
