Such a dependency, she said, “would increase the risk of foreign interference.”
Spain’s interior ministry said in a statement to POLITICO that the contract “does not entail any security risk and complies with the levels required in the National Security Scheme.” Spanish interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said on Sep. 9 that security services are in control of the data on the servers and that it would not be possible to extract the data.
A Huawei spokesperson said the company “strongly opposes the remarks” made by Virkkunen. They “lack a verified, transparent, and objective technical assessment,” the spokesperson said, arguing that singling out Huawei as a high-risk supplier “without legal basis contradicts the principles of free trade.”
In recent years, Brussels and a large group of EU capitals have called for a careful approach to the use of Chinese technology and particularly to Huawei, which is seen as a high-risk vendor under criteria set out in 2020 under a 5G “toolbox” security exercise.
However, the European Commission has estimated that only 10 countries have fully implemented the toolbox; others have done so partially or not at all. The Commission itself has committed to “avoid[ing] exposure of its own corporate communications networks to mobile networks using Huawei and ZTE,” Virkkunen said in Wednesday’s response.
The Spanish government more recently canceled a separate contract with Telefonica over the use of Huawei equipment, Reuters reported.
This story was updated to add a comment from Huawei.
