Huawei taking part in EU research programs despite Commission crackdown
POLITICO - Thursday, February 26, 2026Chinese technology giant Huawei is participating in 16 projects funded by the European Commission’s Horizon Europe research and innovation program despite being dubbed a high-risk supplier.
The Commission restricted Huawei from accessing Horizon projects in 2023 after saying that it (and another Chinese telecom supplier, ZTE) posed “materially higher risks than other 5G suppliers” in relation to cybersecurity and foreign influence.
However, public data reviewed by POLITICO’s EU Influence newsletter shows that Huawei still takes part in several projects, many of which are in sensitive fields like cloud computing, 5G and 6G telecom technology and data centers.
These projects mean Huawei has been working alongside universities and tech companies in Spain, France, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Finland and Italy. It also has access to the intellectual property generated by the projects, as the contracts require the sharing of information as well as joint ownership of the results between partners.
A Commission spokesperson confirmed that of the 16 projects, 15 were signed before the restrictions took place. The remaining project “was signed in 2025 and was assessed as falling outside the scope of the existing restrictions.”
Many of the projects started in January 2023, with the contracts running out at the end of this year, while others will last until 2027, 2028 and 2030.
“Huawei participates in and implements projects funded under Horizon Europe in a lawful and compliant manner,” a company spokesperson said.
One of the projects is to develop data privacy and protection tools in the fields of AI and big data, along with Italy’s National Research Council, the University of Malaga, the University of Toulouse, the University of Calabria, and a Bavarian high-tech research institute for software-intensive systems.
Huawei received €207,000 to lead the work on “design, implementation, and evaluation of use cases,” according to the contract for that project, seen by POLITICO.
Commission crackdown
Last month the Commission proposed a new Cybersecurity Act that would restrict Huawei from critical telecoms networks under EU law, after years of asking national capitals to do so voluntarily.
“I’m not satisfied [with] how the member states … have been implementing our 5G Toolbox,” the Commission’s executive VP for tech and security policy, Henna Virkkunen, told POLITICO at the time, referring to EU guidelines to deal with high-risk vendors. “We know that we still have high-risk vendors in our 5G networks, in the critical parts … so now we will have stricter rules on this.” The Commission is also working on measures to cut Chinese companies out of lucrative public contracts.
Bart Groothuis, a liberal MEP working on the Cybersecurity Act, told POLITICO that the Commission should “honor the promises and commitments” it made “and push them out.”
“They should be barred from participating. Period.”
Huawei was also involved in an influence scandal last year, with Belgian authorities investigating whether the tech giant exerted undue influence over EU lawmakers. The scandal led to Huawei’s being banned from lobbying on the premises of the European Commission and the European Parliament.