After being lambasted in the halls of Congress in recent months, Chinese telecoms vendor Huawei said on Monday that it is planning to double its European workforce. The company also said it will create a new research center in Finland, the home of mobile giant Nokia.

Huawei has also struggled beyond the US—in March 2012, Huawei was blocked from even bidding on Australia’s new $38 billion national broadband network. Many government officials around the world have expressed concern that Huawei has extensive ties to the Chinese military and may be including backdoors that could provide serious security risks. (That pressure hasn’t stopped the company from eyeing potential lucrative deals in countries with less scrupulous leadership, like Syria.)

"Europe has proven to be quite an open business environment for Huawei," company spokesman Roland Sladek told Reuters on Monday.

The Chinese firm said it would ramp up hiring, to about 14,000 workers across Europe within three to five years, and would spend €70 million ($91 million) on its new facility. In September 2012, Huawei had previously announced an R&D investment of $2 billion in the United Kingdom.