European Union Opens Investigation Of TikTok Regarding Alleged Election Intervention

JAKARTA The European Commission officially opened an investigation into the social media platform TikTok on Tuesday, December 17 regarding its alleged failure to limit election interventions, especially in the Romanian presidential election last month.

The European Commission said it would seek information from TikTok and investigate platform policies related to political advertising, paid political content, and content recommendation systems that are vulnerable to manipulation. This step was taken as an effort to ensure transparency and security in the democratic process in EU member countries.

The opening of this formal process gives the European Commission the authority to take further enforcement action and accept commitments to improvements from TikTok. Even so, there is no specific deadline to complete this investigation.

TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, stated that it has protected platform integrity in more than 150 elections worldwide. The company also claims to have provided complete information to the European Commission on their efforts.

TikTok insists it does not accept paid political advertisements and proactively removes content that violates policies related to misinformation and hate speech.

On December 5, the European Commission ordered TikTok to freeze data related to the Romanian elections under the European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA) law. The law aims to regulate how the world's largest social media companies operate in Europe.

The presidential election in Romania was later canceled by the country's highest court after allegations emerged of Russian interference and victory of pro-Russian ultranationalist candidate Calin Georgescu in the first round.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, stressed the importance of protecting democracy from foreign interference.

"We have to protect our democracy from all forms of foreign intervention. If we suspect any interference, especially during elections, we must act quickly and decisively," von der Leyen said in a statement.

The European Commission also noted the risk of intervention in future elections in EU member countries, including parliamentary elections in Germany in February and the presidential election in Croatia which began on December 29.

This investigation is the third against TikTok under the DSA law. Two previous investigations related to risks for underage users. One of the investigations has been closed after TikTok committed to removing the TikTok Lite Rewards feature from the European Union region.

The European Commission continues to emphasize the importance of transparency and data protection in elections to ensure public trust and integrity of democracy throughout Europe.