Its federal government Germany intends to exclude her participation of Chinese companies in its telecommunications sectors.

The decision will even affect already installed systems.

In the near future, the risk for security issues in the telecommunications network will be assessed Germany’s 5Gsaid the spokesman of the Ministry of the Interior, Maximilian Kahl, pointing out that the audit concerns security issues of critical systems, mainly regarding their reliability, confidentiality of information, public order and security.

“The issue is of course how we will not be overly dependent on specific providers“, Mr. Kahl emphasized, clarifying that the legislation allows for retrospective control and the retroactive imposition of bans on already active participations in the country’s critical infrastructure. Despite the complicated bureaucratic process, the government expects that the first ban decisions will be implemented already in the summer.

Chinese interests such as Huawei and ZTE are playing a major role in Germany’s 5G network rollout, with the former responsible for 59% of the network.

The partnership has been seen as controversial from the start, as many European countries have universally rejected the use of Chinese systems, while there has also been intense diplomatic pressure from the US, fearing that China could gain too much influence over Europe’s communications network and access on sensitive data.

Government spokesman Stephen Hempstreit, however, refused to answer whether the issue was raised during Chancellor Olaf Soltz’s recent meeting with US President Joe Biden in Washington.

Since 2011, German authorities have approved six applications for a total of 100 components, but, according to public broadcaster ARD, two new applications are now being considered more cautiously.

As ARD points out, the government wants to completely reform the process so that network operators such as Telekom and Vodafone may in the future have to rely on other manufacturers, outside of China, such as Nokia or Ericsson.

The government’s decision was also welcomed by the opposition, with the representative of the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) for foreign policy issues, Norbert Rettgen, characterizing “good news“the eventual exclusion”unreliable providers» from the German 5G network.

The representative of the Parliamentary Group of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) for digital policy Jens Zimmerman said for his part that “given the changing security situation, we cannot tolerate in our core networks any hardware from manufacturers that are not fully trusted».