It is now being looked into by two Digital Services Act (DSA) authorities. On Tuesday, the European Union said it had started a formal process to look into election risks, especially the recent elections in Romania.
The investigation will mostly look into TikTok’s recommender systems and the “risks linked to the coordinated inauthentic manipulation or automated exploitation of the service,” as the Commission put it. The EU will also look at how TikTok handles political ads and material that people pay for.
The group said in a press release, “As for both parts, one of the things the Commission is going to look into is whether TikTok has taken all the necessary steps to reduce the risks that come with certain regional and linguistic aspects of national elections.”
After a shocking first round result in Romania’s presidential election, the EU sent TikTok a data retention order earlier this month. There were worries that the short-video platform might have been used to meddle in the election.
That retention order covered EU national elections that took place over four months, from November 24, 2024, to March 31, 2025. This shows how worried the Commission is as it works to enforce the DSA on a big platform.
Since the end of August 2023, the pan-EU online governance framework has required bigger platforms like TikTok to look at and fix a number of risks that could happen on their services. These risks include those that could affect the safety of elections and the political process. If they don’t, they could be fined up to 6% of their world turnover.
So far, no platforms have been fined by the DSA. However, TikTok decided to make some changes to their products in the summer, which ended an earlier investigation by the Commission into whether their designs were making them too addicting. And it’s clear that the lawmakers in the bloc want the rule to make a difference by actually making the web safer for users.
Intelligence Files That Were Made Public
In Romania’s election, however, it looks like the opposite was true: declassified documents from several government agencies show that TikTok did not stop fake accounts from being used to artificially boost and algorithmically amplify content that supported a pro-Russian far-right candidate in the first round of voting for the presidency. The decision has since been thrown out by the country’s highest court.
The Commission said that the decision to look into TikTok’s role in keeping the Romanian elections safe was based on information from “third-party” reports and released intelligence reports from the government.
The EU said, “The investigation also follows the analysis of the risk assessment reports that TikTok submitted in 2023 and 2024, as well as the replies to the Commission’s requests for information and internal documents that TikTok provided.” This was in reference to the many data requests that DSA enforcers have sent the company since last year, when the rules for very large online platforms (VLOPs) started to be enforced.
It’s still too early to tell what will happen in this new case, but starting a formal case gives the government more enforcement power, like the ability to take immediate action if it thinks risks are too high.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the EU, wrote in a statement that “We must protect our democracies from any kind of foreign interference.” This shows how important the bloc thinks this new investigation is. We need to move quickly and firmly whenever we think this kind of interference is happening, especially during elections.
“There are strong signs that foreign actors meddled in the Romanian presidential elections by using TikTok. We are now thoroughly investigating whether TikTok has broken the Digital Services Act by failing to deal with these risks.” This should make it very clear that all internet platforms in the EU, including TikTok, need to be held responsible, von der Leyen said.
Henna Virkkunen, the bloc’s new EVP for Tech Sovereignty, Security, and Democracy, said she “looks forward to working closely with TikTok to address any concerns that may arise.” This was a bit more positive.
If you asked TikTok for a reaction, they sent you a statement saying, “We’ve protected the integrity of our platform through over 150 elections around the world and continue to proactively address these industry-wide challenges.” There is a lot of information that TikTok has given the European Commission about these efforts, and we have made our strong measures clear to everyone.
TikTok said, “We do not accept paid political ads, and we remove content that breaks our rules on misinformation, harassment, and hate speech. We also continue to work with the European Commission and regional and national authorities to address requests and talk about concerns.”
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The company says it found and shut down five small hidden networks that were trying to influence the Romanian elections. It has published details of what it found here. It also says that it has taken down “hundreds of thousands” of fake accounts and “millions” of fake friends and likes. TikTok also says that it has reacted quickly to requests from Romanian authorities about content so far and will continue to do so.
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