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PARIS – The French Senate on Wednesday rejected a bill to tighten controls on telecom equipment, following a US warning about Chinese telecom giant Huawei.
The new legislation was a last minute addition to broad corporate law by the government and would have required telecom operators to seek formal approval of certain equipment deemed particularly sensitive to espionage or sabotage.
In order to justify their vote against the amendment, several senators pointed out that the government had not given them enough time to debate the issue, which he considered crucial and strategic.
"We have not been able to do our job as parliamentarians," said Senator Elisabeth Lamure, vice chair of the Economic Affairs Committee of the Upper House.
The rejection by the Senate means that the government will have to find another bill to enact this provision, which could delay its implementation by several months.
"The government will find other legislation to raise this problem," said a French finance ministry official before the Senate vote, anticipating the rejection of the amendment.
Huawei, the world's largest telecom equipment maker, faces scrutiny of its dealings with the Chinese government and claims that Beijing could use its technology to spy, which Huawei denies.
The US Department of Justice also accused Huawei of conspiring to violate US sanctions against Iran and stealing T-Mobile US Inc.'s robotic technology.
The future deployment of fifth-generation mobile technology has raised concerns within the government, as two of the largest French telecommunications operators, Bouygues Telecom and the SFR group of Altice Europe, are already using Huawei's equipment for their network. .
"The transition from 4G to 5G changes a lot of things technically, which means that the most sensitive information is not only found in the central networks, but also in the antennas," said the Minister of Finance, Bruno Le Maire, in an interview with France 2. the vote in the Senate. "We must protect this sensitive information."
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