EU Unveils Mandatory 36-Month Phase-Out of Huawei-Linked Gear Across 18 Critical Sectors

Europe has tried to ring-fence strategic technology before: in 1949 the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom) embargoed Western electronics to the Soviet bloc, betting that control of supply chains would translate into security leverage. Today's draft echoes that logic, recasting 2020’s non-binding 5G “toolbox” into hard law amid a broader post-COVID, post-Ukraine trend toward techno-sovereignty and de-risking from both China and the United States. Whether the EU can afford the bill or enforce unity—member states balked at the cost of replacing Huawei 5G kit as recently as 2024—will determine if this is a watershed like GDPR (which re-shaped global data norms) or a stalled directive like the 2013 attempt to forge a single telecom market. On a 100-year horizon, the move signals Europe’s re-entry into great-power industrial strategy: controlling nodes of the digital infrastructure much as it once controlled coal and steel, gambling that security and autonomy outweigh short-term expense and potential trade retaliation.