The European Commission is taking issue with Spain over its agreements with Huawei.

BarcelonaThe European Commission insisted this Tuesday that European Union countries must "restrict or exclude Huawei from their 5G networks" because the Chinese company "represents a much greater risk" than other providers. "The lack of swift action exposes the European Union as a whole to a clear risk," European Commission spokesperson for Technological Sovereignty Thomas Regnier told Efe news agency when asked about the agreement Spain has signed with Huawei for the supply of wiretapping services.

Regnier recalled that the EU executive already asked EU member states in 2019 to take concrete measures to assess the risks that the development of the 5G network could pose to cybersecurity, in a document in which it already targeted Huawei. In this sense, Brussels "urges member states to implement" these recommendations.

In fact, the Chinese company has been in the crosshairs of Brussels and several European governments for years. Last March Belgian police searched Huawei headquarters in Brussels as part of an investigation into alleged corruption in the European Parliament. Belgian authorities have indications that a group of lobbyists for the Asian multinational may have participated in bribery, counterfeiting, money laundering, and organized crime involving members of Parliament and employees.

In addition, the Lithuanian government also would have recommended destroying Huawei phones, following a diplomatic dispute with Beijing over an investigation by the Baltic country's authorities into the security systems of 5G mobile phones from Chinese manufacturers.

Warning against Spain also in the US

The chairs of the US Senate and House intelligence committees, Tom Cotton and Rick Crawford, respectively, last week called on the Trump administration to review its intelligence-sharing agreements with Spain in light of the Huawei contract. Additionally, Cotton and Crawford sent a letter to US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on July 16.

The lawmakers noted that Spain's Interior Ministry allegedly awarded contracts worth €12.3 million to Huawei to provide servers and consulting services for Spain's wiretap systems and stressed that the company "has close ties to the Party." "We are writing to urge you to review your intelligence-sharing agreements with the government of Spain to ensure that any information shared with Spain's intelligence, defense, and security services does not reveal US national security secrets within the Chinese Communist Party," they wrote.

The US and China had a diplomatic dispute in 2018 when Meng Wanzhou, Huawei's chief financial officer and daughter of the company's founder, Ren Zhengfei, was detained in Canada after authorities there received an extradition order. An agreement between Beijing and Washington eventually allowed Meng to return to China in 2021. without going to trial in exchange for pleading guilty.