diff --git a/.github/workflows/e2e.yml b/.github/workflows/e2e.yml
index 427f75250..8602c20c0 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/e2e.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/e2e.yml
@@ -18,7 +18,9 @@ env:
   PYTHON_VERSION: "3.9"
   OPENAI_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.OPENAI_API_KEY }}
   HATCH_VERSION: "1.14.1"
-  HF_API_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.HUGGINGFACE_API_KEY }}
+  # we use HF_TOKEN instead of HF_API_TOKEN to work around a Hugging Face bug
+  # see https://github.com/deepset-ai/haystack/issues/9552
+  HF_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.HUGGINGFACE_API_KEY }}
 
 jobs:
   run:
diff --git a/e2e/pipelines/test_named_entity_extractor.py b/e2e/pipelines/test_named_entity_extractor.py
index bade77404..26d36ffa0 100644
--- a/e2e/pipelines/test_named_entity_extractor.py
+++ b/e2e/pipelines/test_named_entity_extractor.py
@@ -68,8 +68,8 @@ def test_ner_extractor_hf_backend(raw_texts, hf_annotations, batch_size):
 
 @pytest.mark.parametrize("batch_size", [1, 3])
 @pytest.mark.skipif(
-    not os.environ.get("HF_API_TOKEN", None),
-    reason="Export an env var called HF_API_TOKEN containing the Hugging Face token to run this test.",
+    not os.environ.get("HF_API_TOKEN", None) and not os.environ.get("HF_TOKEN", None),
+    reason="Export an env var called HF_API_TOKEN or HF_TOKEN containing the Hugging Face token to run this test.",
 )
 def test_ner_extractor_hf_backend_private_models(raw_texts, hf_annotations, batch_size):
     extractor = NamedEntityExtractor(backend=NamedEntityExtractorBackend.HUGGING_FACE, model="deepset/bert-base-NER")