Market Watch | January 13, 2011 | Zhang Hong
Europeans pressure two Chinese firms despite earlier settlement
LONDON (Caixin Online) — A Belgian company’s recent settlement with China’s largest telecom-equipment suppliers seemed initially to break the back of a trade dispute in the European Union targeting Chinese imports.
But while Belgium’s Option /quotes/comstock/24s!e:opti (BE:OPTI 0.61, -0.02, -3.17%)  /quotes/comstock/11i!opnvy (OPNVY 0.75, -0.06, -7.41%)  was preparing to drop its case against Chinese companies, including employee-owned Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. /quotes/comstock/22h!e:763 (HK:763 31.40, -0.10, -0.32%)  /quotes/comstock/11i!ztcof (ZTCOF 4.08, -0.03, -0.73%)  in exchange for a Huawei agreement to license its software for 27 million euros ($36 million) the first year, European trade unions mounted a new attack.
Telecom-supplier workers represented by the European Metalworkers Federation and the European Workers Council filed a joint petition with the European Parliament in early October, claiming Chinese companies pose a serious threat to the competitive capacity of their European rivals.
The petition cited possible technology transfers to Chinese companies from European telecom operators, and warned about alleged security dangers if telecom infrastructure is outsourced to non-EU companies.
Huawei and ZTE are currently fulfilling telecom-network construction contracts in Italy, Hungary and other parts of Europe.
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