This Tuesday, the European Commission opened an investigation against TikTok for failing to comply with Digital Services regulations, specifically for failing to address the risks related to the integrity of the elections in the last call to the polls in Romania, on November 24th. Specifically, the investigation will analyze Russian interference in the Romanian elections that gave victory to the pro-Russian candidate who used the Chinese social network to campaign. The Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the election result due to hybrid attacks.
The investigation by the Community Executive against the Chinese social network focuses on two points of the civic discourse of the last electoral call. On the one hand, due to TikTok’s recommendation system and the risks related to speech manipulation. On the other hand, with the system of political ads and payment for political content.
The European Commission will analyze whether the social network has put in place measures to mitigate risks related to linguistic and regional aspects of the Romanian national elections. In this sense, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has emphasized the need to protect democracies from “any external interference.” Furthermore, he stressed that “it must be abundantly clear that, In the EU, all online platforms, including TikTok, must be held accountable.”
Brussels will launch an in-depth investigation of a priority nature based on declassified reports from the intelligence services of the Romanian authorities as well as reports prepared by third parties. Research aligns with the risk analyzes that Brussels launched against the social network in 2023 and 2024 and will take into account requests for information and internal documents sent by TikTok.
With the opening of this procedure, the European Commission will ask TikTok for more information, to launch monitoring actions, interviews, inspections and will request access to its algorithms. Brussels may, on the other hand, accept commitments from the social network to remedy the situation. There is no deadline for the European Commission to complete its investigation, but it depends on the complexity of each case, and the social network could face fines of up to 6% of its annual global turnover.
The new Community Vice President of Technological Sovereignty, Henna Virkkunen, has indicated that “as the European Union, we have the responsibility to safeguard our democratic processes of possible manipulations and interferences. “I am confident that our investigation into TikTok’s practices will contribute to a safer and more trustworthy online environment for all EU citizens.”
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