The European Comission, The executive arm of the European Union (EU), vetoed the use of the video broadcasting application TikTok on personal cell phones and official devices, in a decision that the firm considered “wrong.”
As a result of this determination, all Commission staff have been called to remove the application from portable telephones and official service devices at the latest until March 15.
A Commission source stated that the decision was prompted by the institution’s computer security services to “protect the data [del personal] and reinforce the cybersecurity“.
The European Commissioner for Industry, Thierry Breton, told the press that the Commission ensures “cybersecurity, the protection of its employees and of all those who work” in that institution, but did not offer additional details.
Immediately a spokesperson for TikTok expressed his “disappointment” with the passage of the Commission.
“We are disappointed with this decision, because we believe it is wrong and is based on fundamental misunderstandings,” the spokesman said.
“We have contacted the Commission to set the record straight and explain how we protect the data of the 125 million people across the EU who visit TikTok every month,” he added.
For his part, the European Commissioner for Industry, Thierry Breton, said that the Commission has considered cybersecurity and data protection of the people “who work” in the institution.
TikTok’s parent company, the Chinese firm ByteDance, is under strict surveillance in Western countries amid suspicions that authorities in China have access to user data.
In 2022, the United States banned the app from federal government devices, and some US lawmakers are trying to ban TikTok from operating nationwide.
In November, TikTok admitted that some staff in China could access the data of European users.
sensitive data
However, TikTok claims that it is acting to conform to the rigid rules of operation of the digital giants in the EU space.
In his reaction to the Commission’s decision, the firm’s spokesman assured that TikTok is committed to “minimizing data flows [de sus usuarios] out of Europe”.
“We continue to enhance our approach to data security, including establishing three data centers in Europe to store user data locally, and further reducing employee access to that data,” he said.
The CEO of TikTokMr. Shou Zi Chew was in Brussels in January for high-level meetings, including a lengthy interview with Breton.
According to the European commissioner, at that meeting he told the Chinese businessman the Commission’s concerns with the data security of users in the EU.
To this concern, the Singaporean businessman would have assured him that TikTok was already working on a “robust” system for the treatment of this data on European users, which would remain within the block.
The EU decided to adopt rigid rules of operation of digital giantslike TikTok, with the adoption of two parallel laws.
The Digital Services Act (LSD) forces digital giants to act quickly to remove content contrary to European law.
Meanwhile, the Digital Markets Law (LMD) vetoes anti-competitive behavior and reserves a specific and particularly rigorous set of requirements for giants such as Google, Apple, Facebook (Meta) or Microsoft, a group that also includes TikTok.
It also monitors the use of data collected from European users.
This regulation establishes a threshold of 45 million monthly users to divide between the companies in the sector and the “giants”. A week ago, TikTok announced that it had 125 million monthly active users in the EU.
