The events surrounding the presidential election in Romania have led the EU Commission to initiate proceedings against TikTok on the basis of the Digital Services Act (DSA). The Commission announced in Brussels on Tuesday that it was concerned about a suspected breach of the DSA. The Commission is investigating suspicions of influence by a third country.
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EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, “We must protect our democracy from any kind of foreign influence.” “Following serious indications that foreign actors used TikTok to interfere in the Romanian presidential election, we are now fully investigating whether TikTok violated the Digital Services Act.”
Along with the process, the EU Commission, as the supervisory authority, could demand the release of internal documents from TikTok owner ByteDance. If necessary, EU authorities can also use administrative assistance to seize documents and data from company assets. ByteDance has a European representative in Ireland. The Commission had previously ordered TikTok to secure documents and data related to the elections in Romania.
surprising election results
In the first round of presidential elections in Romania in November, little-known pro-Russian candidate Calin Georgescu surprisingly made it into the runoff. Georgescu, who received only single-digit results in the elections in October, had, among other things, launched a massive campaign on TikTok against the EU and NATO.
It is not clear to what extent there was undue outside influence on the elections. The Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the first round of voting and ordered re-elections. The previous incumbent had published this intelligence informationWhose objective is to prove undue influence.
The election management complained that Georgescu’s team and TikTok violated transparency requirements for presidential elections. The platform should have ensured that all presidential candidates disclose their sources of funding for paid campaigns.
Various figures play a role in Georgescu’s environment – including a local Bitcoin king and a South African company. However, there is no clear evidence yet to support the suspicion that Russia is behind it, which is interested in destabilizing Romania, an EU member and Ukraine’s neighbor.
TikTok in sight
TikTok is widespread in the EU member state, with about 20 million inhabitants – it’s unclear how many active users it actually offers. The platform said several times that it had looked into undue influence before the election and that in previous months it had thwarted influence attempts by others, including Russia, Turkey and Romania.
The Digital Services Act specifically obliges large platforms to take appropriate action against potential risks. To what extent TikTok has fulfilled its obligations here, this will be part of the investigation. In particular, the platform’s recommendation system, but also paid political content and political advertising measures will be part of the investigation that has now been launched.
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