EU Commission: TikTok must keep all EU election data

Following the surprise success of pro-Russian candidate Calin Georgescu in the Romanian presidential election, who campaigned primarily on TikTok, the EU Commission has increased its monitoring of social media apps within the framework of the Digital Services Act (DSA). With the “retention order,” the Commission wants to ensure that TikTok stores data and internal documents that relate to “actual or anticipated systemic risks” to the elections.

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preserve evidence

This is intended to ensure that information and evidence is available in the event of further Commission investigations into TikTok’s DSA compliance. Storage order affects national elections in the EU Between November 24, 2024 and March 31, 2025. It therefore refers not only to the ongoing election in Romania, but also to the federal election in February.

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Specifically, the requirement includes internal documents and information about the design and operation of the video app’s recommendation systems, as well as how the company addresses the risk of intentional manipulation through “coordinated, inauthentic use of the service.” The subsidiary of Chinese company ByteDance is supposed to “freeze” potential evidence of “any systematic violations of its terms of use”, focusing on political advertising.

Campaign from Russia?

According to its own statements, the Commission is reacting to information that “points to foreign interference from Russia” in the Romanian election. Georgescu was said to have benefited from a coordinated social media campaign involving foreign entities.

President Klaus Iohannis has now published the secret services’ findings. As a result, Romania’s Supreme Court declared the first round of presidential elections invalid. This must be repeated now. The runoff election between Georgescu and Elena Lasconi was actually scheduled to take place over the weekend.

Last Friday, the Commission sent TikTok an official request for information on DSA basis. In it, they called on operators to provide more information on how to manage the risks of information manipulation.

“We are stepping up contact with digital and cyber regulators across Europe in light of emerging evidence of systematic inauthentic activity,” said Hanna Virkkunen, the Commission’s new vice-president for technological sovereignty. TikTok promised to continue the collaboration and rejected “speculations and inaccurate reports.”

(vbr)