The European Court of Auditors has criticized the expansion of the 5G mobile communications standard in European countries for being too slow. The different safety standards within the Union also came up for discussion.
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Eu: 5G in all cities and transport routes by 2025
The EU Commission has set itself the ambitious goal of having all urban areas and major transport routes connected to the new 5G standard by 2025. Five years later, the entire area is to be covered by it. The Commission associates 5G with a wide range of new opportunities in achieving its goals.
5G for citizens, business and infrastructure
For example, the leadership in Brussels expects widespread use of 5G to lead to significant progress in digitization and better connectivity. More and more citizens would increasingly like to have genuine digital services when dealing with public authorities. But business would also benefit more from a better-connected infrastructure. The same applies to the implementation of their broad environmental and climate goals.
Many Eu countries lag behind
However, more than half of the countries targeted are a long way from achieving their goals. Sixteen of the countries evaluated stated that they could at best only rudimentarily achieve these targets. Many of them, including Germany, even fear that they will not be able to achieve these targets at all within the specified period. The main reason for this would be the still inadequately clarified security issue.
5G: insecure or not?
Countries such as Hungary, which could well achieve the ambitious Eu targets at present, are characterized above all by lower security standards. The Eu had indeed issued security guidelines with regard to data protection and 5G. But by then, many network operators had already installed their equipment. Subsequent removal of the providers, most of whom come from China, from the structures would probably entail too high follow-up costs for many.
Some countries, most notably Germany, take a more critical view and take U.S. and EU security concerns about Chinese suppliers seriously enough to enact laws to protect their critical infrastructure. One of the suppliers frequently criticized in this context, Huawei, rejected accusations of close ties to its own government.
