Two Screenings: Why Europe Screened Huawei but not the Hyperscalers¶
Stefane Fermigier (Abilian) · sf@abilian.com
Draft working paper v0.7, 2026-07-16. Comparative case analysis with an imported theoretical frame; conceptual and documentary; no formal result is derived and no identification is claimed.
Abstract¶
Within a single polity and a single decade, the European Union designed two opposite screens for foreign suppliers of critical digital infrastructure. Against Chinese telecom vendors, the 2020 5G Toolbox screened structurally, on ownership and home-state control; against US cloud providers, EU instruments converged on behavioural requirements, and the EUCS certification scheme dropped its ownership and immunity criteria in 2024. We explain the divergence with two channels from a companion mechanism-design model: verification feasibility (the decisive attribute is trivially verifiable in one case and requires a contested apparatus in the other) and capture, which targeted enforcement where the screen's design was publicly legible (5G) and design where it was not (cloud). A design-by-enforcement matrix organizes the record and yields predictions that developments postdating the calibration window (the Cloud Sovereignty Framework, the Cloud and AI Development Act, the 2026 Cybersecurity Act revision) bear out.
Keywords: procurement, screening, regulatory capture, 5G, cloud, digital sovereignty, European Union.
About this paper¶
| Programme | Game theory |
| Genre | Draft working paper |
| Version | v0.7 |
| Date | 2026-07-16 |
| Full text | |
| Plain-language explainer | Huawei vs the hyperscalers |
Cite this paper¶
Fermigier, S. (2026). Two Screenings: Why Europe Screened Huawei but not the Hyperscalers.
Draft working paper v0.7, Abilian Econ Lab.
https://econ.lab.abilian.com/papers/two-screenings/