Huawei was revealed by Financial Times (FT) as a participant in a number of European Union-funded projects covering R&D in potentially sensitive future technologies, despite action in some member states restricting the vendor’s 5G kit on deemed security issues.
The newspaper claimed Huawei is involved in 11 projects under the Horizon Europe umbrella, which covers research into a range of areas with specific focuses on advancing green initiatives and what the European Commission calls a digitally-led recovery from Covid-19 (coronavirus).
Huawei has reportedly received €3.9 million of the funding so far. The entire Horizon Europe project carries a budget of €95.5 billion for the period from 2021 to 2027.
In its statement to FT, a European Commission representative indicated the amount handed out to the Chinese vendor was less than 1 per cent of the total being spent under the initiative across 6G, cloud computing and AI.
Huawei undertaking research into next generation systems as part of EU projects is somewhat surprising given in some member states it is being limited from supplying for current mobile networks.
Last month, Bloomberg reported Portugal could become the latest EU country to slap restrictions on use of the vendor’s 5G kit by restricting operators to sourcing from companies either based in the EU, members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or signed-up to NATO.
Subsequently FT claimed European Commission was mulling action to ban vendors deemed a security risk from 5G networks across member states.
