Berlin and Madrid are resisting the European Commission’s push for binding legislation on Huawei and ZTE, citing Beijing-retaliation risk and the cost of AI-infrastructure build-out.
Germany and Spain are leading opposition inside the European Council to the European Commission’s draft plan to ban Huawei and ZTE equipment from EU telecom networks at the bloc level.
The two member states want decisions about high-risk vendors to remain under national-level control, and have warned that an EU-wide ban would invite retaliation from Beijing and inflate the cost of the artificial-intelligence infrastructure build-out the bloc has spent the past 18 months trying to accelerate.
The pushback lands at an awkward moment for Brussels. The Commission has spent most of 2026 trying to convert its long-standing “recommendation” against Chinese telecom suppliers into binding law.
In early May it issued a fresh formal recommendation, broader in scope than the original 2020 version, urging member states to exclude Huawei and ZTE not only from 5G core networks but from the wider connectivity stack.
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In January, Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen unveiled a cybersecurity package that would, on current drafts, force the removal of designated high-risk-supplier components from key network infrastructure within 36 months of the rules taking effect.
Germany and Spain’s objections are aimed at the binding-legislation phase, not the recommendations that preceded it.
The numerical picture explains why Berlin’s position is the one Brussels has most struggled to move. Huawei equipment was still installed in roughly 60% of German 5G radio sites as recently as late 2024.
Germany has its own national phase-out plan, agreed with Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefónica Deutschland, requiring critical-component removal from cores by end-2026 and broader radio-access-network removal by end-2029.
That domestic timetable is, in Berlin’s view, the relevant framework. An EU-level binding ban would tighten the timetable, lock in compliance costs Germany has already partly absorbed, and remove the negotiating room operators currently use to manage their Huawei contractual exposure.
Spain’s position is structurally different. MasOrange chose Ericsson for a six-year 5G standalone core deal in February, but Telefónica renewed its 5G core contract with Huawei in late 2024 to run until 2030. Spain also entrusted significant fibre-optic infrastructure to Huawei in summer 2025, in a decision the Commission has separately flagged as creating “dependence on a high-risk supplier in a critical and sensitive sector.”
A binding EU ban would force the unwinding of contracts Spanish operators are still actively executing.
The AI-cost argument is the new political layer in this week’s pushback. Both governments have noted that AI-data-centre build-out across Europe will demand telecom-network upgrades on a scale the bloc has not yet planned for, and that excluding Huawei from the supplier pool while simultaneously pressing for accelerated AI infrastructure rollout produces a price problem nobody wants to absorb.
Ericsson and Nokia, the European alternatives, are operating at capacity and pricing accordingly.
The argument is not, in either capital, that Huawei is harmless. It is that the Commission’s timing forces a choice between two of its own stated industrial priorities.
The wider context is moving in Brussels’ favour, even as Germany and Spain hold the line. As of January 2026, 13 of 27 member states had taken concrete 5G security measures targeting Huawei and ZTE, up from 11 in early 2024.
The direction of travel is clear; the speed is what is contested. China’s foreign ministry has separately warned that a bloc-wide ban would trigger “countermeasures,” which neither Berlin nor Madrid is keen to invite given existing trade exposure.
The European Council is expected to formally consider the binding-legislation draft in the second half of 2026. The negotiation is now in the realm of timetables and exemptions rather than principles, which is where Berlin and Madrid have a genuine prospect of carving out national flexibility.
Brussels will need to decide whether half-loaf compliance is preferable to losing the proposal entirely.
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