Updated July 10, 2024 at 1:17 pm ET

A Huawei store in Berlin; Germany’s main telecoms operators have preliminarily agreed to remove components made by Chinese manufacturers Huawei and ZTE from their core networks. Photo: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg News

Germany will remove Chinese components from the country’s 5G mobile networks by the end of 2029, ending years of debate that had left the country dragging far behind allies in addressing what the U.S. has warned was a key vulnerability.

Under a draft agreement with the government, Germany’s main telecoms operators have agreed to remove components made by Chinese manufacturers Huawei and ZTE from their core networks—the most sensitive part of a mobile network—by the end of 2026, people familiar with the deal said.

The network management system in the radio access networks—the software that handles communication between devices on a wireless network—should be free of Chinese components by the end of 2029, these people said. They stressed that the government and the operators had yet to sign a final agreement and that some details could still change in the coming days.

Under pressure from the U.S., Germany last year pledged to reduce its dependence on imported Chinese technology and raw materials and to diversify its economy’s reliance on trade with China. German security agencies have since warned about increasingly aggressive espionage by Beijing, and prosecutors have detained several suspected Chinese spies this year.

But stagnant growth and frictions within Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-way coalition have gummed up the policy’s implementation. While some in the government are concerned about the security threat posed by China, the chancellery remains eager to encourage Chinese investment and to prevent a collapse in bilateral trade, according to government officials.

These frictions have led Berlin to water down the country’s first China strategy, published last year, to weaken a planned overhaul of its foreign direct investment screening regime currently under discussion and to oppose moves by the European Union to push back against cheap Chinese imports.

A spokesman for the German Interior Ministry said a decision had been made on steps to secure the critical parts of the country’s 5G wireless networks but declined to elaborate. Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica Germany declined to comment. Vodafone didn’t immediately react to a request for comment.

A spokesman for Huawei in Germany declined to comment. ZTE didn’t immediately respond to an email requesting comment. Huawei and ZTE have denied in the past that their equipment posed a security risk.

German mobile network operators have to reassess previously installed Chinese-made components from manufacturers such as Huawei and ZTE in 5G networks. Photo: Martin Meissner/Associated Press

Analysts said that the decision would bring Germany gradually in line with other countries in Europe, from the U.K. to Sweden and the Baltic states, that have banned Chinese components from their telecommunications networks.

Yet they stressed that the move was coming late and largely on terms set by the country’s operators, some of which had threatened to seek compensation for additional costs associated with a ban on Huawei and ZTE components.

“It looks like Germany is doing what the U.K. did, but four years later,” said Noah Barkin, a senior adviser with research firm Rhodium’s China practice. “Better late than never, but it’s very late.”

The timeline of the agreement suggests that most Chinese components would only be removed once they had reached the end of their lifespan and needed to be replaced anyway, Barkin said. Deutsche Telekom, the country’s largest operator, has said it doesn’t have Chinese hardware in its core network.

The phrasing of the preliminary agreement also leaves some leeway for Chinese-made components to remain in the radio access networks beyond 2029. But analysts said swapping management systems—the software that operates this hardware—would likely remove most vulnerabilities.

Chinese components made up 59% of Germany’s 5G radio access networks in 2022, according to data by Strand Consult, an independent telecoms research group, compared with 41% in the U.K., 17% in France and 0% in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Germany has been discussing whether it should restrict the use of Chinese-made parts for more than six years without reaching a conclusion. Despite U.S. pressure, the previous government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel long resisted a ban because of concerns about the cost and potential retaliations from China.

However Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and Moscow’s decision to throttle natural-gas deliveries to Germany led Berlin to probe its economic reliance on hostile countries and reassess the risk posed by Chinese hardware.

Chinese-made 5G equipment was long considered high-quality and cheaper than Western-made equivalents. But the U.S. warned that Chinese components might include backdoors that would allow the Chinese government to siphon off data traveling through the network or potentially enable it to switch them off in case of conflicts.

Write to Bertrand Benoit at bertrand.benoit@wsj.com