EU officials are reportedly exploring ways to force member states to strip Huawei and ZTE technologies from their networks.

Bloomberg reported that European Commission VP Henna Virkkunen wants to enforce a 2020 proposal on excluding the Chinese telecom firms from European 5G networks into a legally binding requirement.

Outlining the bloc’s 5G Cybersecurity Toolbox, then-Commissioner Thierry Breton wrote that the EU “can’t afford to maintain critical dependencies that could become a ‘weapon’ against our interests.”

According to Bloomberg, Virkkunen’s proposal would see member states that fail to rip out technology from either provider facing potential financial sanctions.

Any attempt to bar Huawei and ZTE from European networks is likely to further muddy an already complex political relationship.

China wants a wider pool of trading partners amid pressure from the Trump administration’s fondness for tariffs. However, its support for Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine throws a potential spanner in the works for the EU, a position further compounded by increasing calls from EU leaders to align more closely with the US.

Among those European countries calling for closer ties with the US is Finland, with its President Alexander Stubb standing alongside Nokia CEO Justin Hotard to call on both Huawei and ZTE to be barred from Europe, labelling them as “high-risk vendors.”

In the past week, Finland has been looking to reportedly expand its existing ban on equipment from Chinese vendors, while the German government is mulling replacing Huawei equipment with offerings from Deutsche Telekom (DT), Vodafone, and Telefónica.

Virkkunen’s reported efforts wouldn’t be the first time the EU has sought to push Huawei and ZTE aside over national security concerns,

Following Breton’s 2020 recommendations, the then-internal market commissioner sought to further pile pressure on the pair, pledging to remove them from the commission’s own networks. That was until China pushed back, in a move that ultimately saw the recommendation fall aside for more politically pressing matters.

Such an attempt by the EU could have repercussions for Nokia and Ericsson in the Far East.

Nokia is already anticipating some level of reaction, with the company warning it’s currently being squeezed out of China.

During a press event earlier this year, CEO Hotard said the company’s nearly three percent of the Chinese market could be expunged as “they do not allow us to play in their [Chinese] markets.”

Tommi Uitto, the vendor’s mobile networks chief, added that Nokia is likely to be excluded from China for “national security reasons.”

“Many countries have already banned [certain Chinese firms], but there are also many countries that have not banned high-risk vendors yet,” Uitto said at the event.