Spain is handing ‘crown jewels’ to Huawei, lawmakers warn

BRUSSELS — European Parliament members on Monday slammed the Spanish government for using Huawei to store judicial wiretaps, with one leading lawmaker warning Madrid is putting its “crown jewels” at risk.

The Spanish government has drawn criticism since the summer after it awarded a multimillion euro contract to Huawei for the storage of judicial wiretaps — a move that led the United States to threaten to cease intelligence sharing with Madrid.

The outcry over Spain’s use of the Chinese tech giant for sensitive services lays bare how Europe continues to grapple with how to secure its digital systems against security threats.

The European Union considers Huawei to be a high-risk supplier and wants to crack down on countries that still afford it broad market access. The EU proposed new draft cybersecurity legislation last month that, if approved, would force EU member countries to kick Huawei out of their telecoms networks, after years of trying to get capitals to ban the Chinese vendor voluntarily. 

Lawmakers from several political groups said Spain’s contract with the Chinese tech giant could endanger the EU as a whole. 

“We cannot operate in a union where one of the states actively strips high-risk vendors from its networks while another entrusts them with the crown jewels of its law enforcement,” said Markéta Gregorová, a Czech Pirate Party lawmaker who is part of the Greens group.

Gregorová leads negotiations on a cyber bill that would give the EU the power to force Huawei and other — often Chinese — suppliers out of critical infrastructure in Europe.

“When you introduce a high-risk vendor … we do not just risk a localized data breach, we risk poisoning the well of European intelligence sharing,” she said on Monday.

Juan Ignacio Zoido Álvarez, a member of Spain’s center-right opposition party, said the decision puts “the entirety of the EU at risk.”

The Spanish government has defended the contract it struck for storing wiretaps.

Spain’s Interior Ministry said in a statement that the government had awarded a contract to “European companies,” which then bought storage products. “There is no risk to security, technological and legal sovereignty, nor is there any foreign interference or threat to the custody of evidence,” the ministry said.

Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told the Spanish parliament last September that Telefónica, the country’s telecom champion, operated a state surveillance system called SITEL and that storage “cabinets” had been integrated into that system.  

Bloomberg reported last July that Huawei equipment is not used for classified information, with one government official saying the storage “represents a minor part of a watertight, audited, isolated and certified system.”

On Monday, Juan Fernando López Aguilar, a prominent member of the European Parliament for the Socialists and Democrats group and a member of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchéz’s party in Spain, defended Madrid’s contract and pushed back on EU moves to intervene on the issue.

In terms of “security, espionage, or violation of technological sovereignty,” there is “no risk,” Aguilar said.

Huawei did not respond to a request for comment.