A Swedish court on Tuesday struck down a plea from Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies Co (華為), which challenged the banning of its equipment in the Swedish tender for its 5G rollout.
The administrative court in Stockholm ruled that the decision of the Swedish telecoms authority, PTS, in October last year to ban the use of equipment from Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE Corp (中興) in a new Swedish 5G telecom network — a move that irked Beijing — was legal.
Installed equipment must be removed by Jan. 1, 2025.
“Sweden’s security is an important reason and the administrative court has considered that it’s only the security police and the military that together have a full picture when it comes to the security situation and threats against Sweden,” Judge Ulrika Melin said in a statement.
Huawei denounced the ruling, but did not say whether it would appeal.
“We are of course noting that there has been no evidence of any wrongdoings by Huawei which is being used as basis for this verdict, it is purely based on assumption,” said Kenneth Fredriksen, Huawei’s vice president for central and eastern Europe, and the Nordic region.
Huawei would evaluate the decision and “see what kind of actions we will take to protect our rights,” Fredriksen added.
Following action by the UK in the summer of last year, Sweden became the second country in Europe and the first in the EU to explicitly ban Huawei from almost all of the network infrastructure needed to run its 5G network.
Beijing had said that PTS’ decision could have “consequences” for the Scandinavian country’s companies in China, prompting Swedish telecom giant and Huawei competitor Ericsson AB to worry about retaliation.
“We will continue to be available to have constructive dialogues with Swedish authorities to see if we can find pragmatic ways of taking care of security, and at the same time keeping an open and fair market like Sweden has always been,” Fredriksen said.
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