There’s a feeling across Europe right now, subtle but unmistakable, that something which should have happened a decade ago is finally starting to take shape. The conversation isn’t just about Huawei or telecom gear or security classifications. It’s about sovereignty, about waking up to the reality that Europe — the continent that once defined the direction of global technology — somehow slipped into dependence on a rival that now dominates the very sectors Europeans invented or pioneered. Cutting China out of critical infrastructure isn’t an emotional geopolitical knee-jerk. It’s the correction of a strategic mistake years overdue.
The truth is uncomfortable: Europe once led telecommunications. Nokia and Ericsson weren’t merely brands — they were the infrastructure backbone of wireless connectivity around the world. While Europe was busy regulating the shape of bananas and debating bureaucracy, Huawei and ZTE aggressively scaled, subsidised by the Chinese state, undercutting prices and drowning Western competitors in contracts they couldn’t sustainably match. The result? Europe ceded leadership of 4G and much of 5G rollout to companies answering not to market forces but to Beijing’s industrial strategy. The shift wasn’t organic innovation. It was state-engineered displacement.
When the EU now considers shutting the door on Huawei and other Chinese suppliers, critics often default to the argument of cost or convenience — that replacing equipment will be expensive, that competition might shrink, that Europe risks delays in rolling out future networks. But that framing ignores a harsher truth: the cost of dependence has already been paid — in lost innovation, lost market share, and lost strategic autonomy.
Europe invented GSM. Europe drove the standards for Wi-Fi. Europe shaped early 3G networks and held a commanding position entering 4G. Then the continent stalled. Fragmented investment, complacency, and an over-reliance on Chinese manufacturing created a slow drip erosion of capability. Huawei didn’t just show up with better tech — it showed up with cheaper tech backed by non-market political goals: dominate global telecom infrastructure and create leverage. The result is a supply chain where European carriers install equipment they cannot fully audit, maintain, or trust.
Security experts have been sounding the alarm for years. Critical national infrastructure built on black-box foreign technology — especially from a government with a documented strategy of cyber-enabled influence — is not just risky. It’s naïve. Nations don’t need a Cold War mindset to understand that technology is the foundation of modern power. Whoever controls the networks controls the data. And whoever controls the data has leverage far beyond tariffs or trade deals. The idea that a strategic rival would willingly hand Europe inexpensive, high-quality telecom equipment with zero strategic strings attached belongs more to fairy tales than real geopolitics.
And now, as we enter the 6G decade — and the first whispers of 7G research already aligning in labs — the stakes are exponentially larger. These future networks will go beyond faster smartphones. They will underpin autonomous vehicles, critical defense systems, smart grids, AI-to-AI communications, space-to-earth computing, and quantum-secured networks. If Europe doesn’t reclaim control now, there will be no second chance. Future infrastructure will be so deeply embedded that replacing hostile or opaque supplier chains later may become impossible — economically and technically.
So yes — the phase-out of Chinese telecom equipment is the right move. Completely. Strategically. Technologically. Economically. And ethically. It sends a long-delayed message: Europe isn’t just a marketplace — it’s a technological civilization capable of leading, not just consuming. Cutting China out forces European companies to innovate again. It pressures Nokia, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent legacy DNA — and maybe new players — to compete with ambition, not resignation. It reopens the path for Europe to define global standards, rather than merely adopt whatever emerges cheaper from Shenzhen.
And perhaps most importantly, it restores the principle that infrastructure critical to sovereignty should not be outsourced to adversaries. The timing may feel late, but late is still better than never — and certainly better than continuing sleepwalking into a future where Europe is technologically dependent and politically constrained.
If Europe follows through — consistently, unapologetically — this won’t simply be a policy correction. It will be a renaissance moment: the first step in reclaiming leadership in the very field it once dominated, and must dominate again.
