Italy conditionally approves Vodafone’s 5G deal with Huawei

According to a Reuters report, the Italian government gave Vodafone’s use of Huawei’s 5G equipment a conditional approval. Italy can block or impose tough conditions on deals that involve non EU vendors under “golden powers”, which the government has used three occasions since 2021 to block oreign interest in industries deemed to be strategically important. In the last 12 months, Italy has strengthened its tough stance on Huawei, while not banning the company outright from the country’s 5G infrastructure. The previous Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte vetoed the deal between a telecoms group Fastweb and Huawei to use Huawei’s equipment for the 5G core network, where highly sensitive data is processed.