How Europe learned to stop worrying and love TikTok
Europe's clampdown on TikTok may have come quickly, but its re-embrace of the popular video-sharing application has been no less emphatic.
A year after EU governments moved to restrict the use of the Chinese-owned social media app over security concerns, politicians and parties are flocking to TikTok in droves. Behind their renewed love for the platform is their pursuit of the youth vote in June's EU election.
“We, as Greens, have been very, very critical towards TikTok, like all the EU institutions,” said German Greens lawmaker Anna Cavazzini. But “if you want to reach young voters as a progressive candidate, we also have to be on TikTok." Cavazzini created her account a week ago and is running for a second mandate.
The EU executive was first to impose restrictions on officials using TikTok, asking bureaucrats exactly a year ago to remove the app from their work and work-related phones. The EU's Council of Ministers followed suit, as did the European Parliament. In the weeks that followed, many national governments and ministries restricted their officials from using TikTok; many, if not all of those restrictions still apply today.
The bans — which followed similar moves by the U.S. government — were aimed at limiting the cybersecurity, data security and surveillance risks associated with the app.
TikTok, based in the U.S. and Singapore, is owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance. That has prompted concerns TikTok data could be susceptible to surveillance by Chinese security services, because the country's national legislation requires companies to collaborate with its intelligence agencies.
But far from being shunned like Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE — which have faced a backlash over similar security concerns — TikTok is seeing Europe's politicians, parties and institutions flock to the platform. The app boasts over 1 billion young users worldwide, with an estimated 142 million in the EU this year.
TikTok said this month that nearly one in three members of the European Parliament are now on its app. The legislature has said it will launch its own account to connect with first-time voters and to respond to disinformation ahead of the upcoming June 6-9 election.
Even U.S. President Joe Biden joined the app this month to campaign ahead of America's November presidential elections.
Some EU lawmakers have ventured into dance videos and viral challenges to speak about politics, while others are proper TikTok stars such as French National Rally leader Jordan Bardella (1.1 million followers) and Irish far-left lawmaker Clare Daly (over half a million fans).
Vying for the youth vote
TikTok has ramped up its engagement with European politicians in recent months. The platform was part of a Parliamentary social media conference at the end of November alongside other social media companies like Google, Meta and LinkedIn, at which it discussed its plan to fight misinformation and offered tips on connecting with TikTok's mostly young users ahead of the European election.
There were 73 million young people (aged 15-29) in the EU in 2021. Turnout by young voters in the last European election surged to 50.6 percent; this year, for the first time, Belgians and Germans aged 16 will be eligible to vote in the Parliamentary ballot, joining their 16-year-old peers in Austria and Malta.
The European Greens have already started campaigning on TikTok, while the Party of European Socialists has secured an account in its name and said it is currently “considering using it” to reach out to young people.
“Whereas we initially refrained from using TikTok, the ALDE Party has an active account since January 2024, launched particularly around the European election campaign,” said a press officer for the liberal Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, a European party that includes national-level groupings like the Estonian Reform Party led by PM Kaja Kallas, Germany’s Free Democratic Party, and Ireland’s Fianna Fáil.
A new wave of politicians has also joined in recent weeks, from Portuguese Social Democrat João Alburquerque to Slovak Christian Democrat Vladimír Bilčík. “We cannot simply leave this to the anti-system populist forces if we want to be successful in European elections,” Bilčík said.
Surveillance-proofing TikTok
New Chinese data security and algorithms legislation, including an expanded espionage law, took effect in recent months. The new rules added to the national security law of 2017, which compels companies to hand over data to authorities in national security cases, with staff that refuse to do so subject to detention or criminal prosecution. Beyond the risk of data leaks, the app has been criticized for failing to protect personal data and even for corrupting young minds.
Several politicians running in June's EU election said they had decided to access their account on a separate phone due to the app’s risks.
A spokesperson for the European Greens party said its officials had provided guidance to national parties on the “fair and safe” use of TikTok.
French left-wing EU lawmaker Leïla Chaibi said she used TikTok on her own work phone and was aware of the risks. “There’s a price to pay for that and that’s my data, and I'm aware of that," she said.
TikTok has repeatedly denied it is under the control of the Chinese government or that it has given data to Beijing. It has also doubled down on efforts to reassure lawmakers, opening data centers in Europe under a plan called Project Clover.
“We'd like to think that [the bans] would be lifted, [but] these things take time and we're just there to help, to build trust and provide information,” said TikTok’s Brussels head of office, Caroline Greer.
The company announced in September 2023 it was starting to move the data of Europeans to infrastructure in Ireland while building two new data centers in Norway and Ireland.
Still, the company's top lobbyist in Europe, Theo Bertram, previously acknowledged it would be "extremely difficult” to prevent European data from going to China. TikTok’s lead privacy supervisor, the Irish Data Protection Commission, is set to decide in the coming months whether the company unlawfully sent the data of its European users to China.
The platform also faces scrutiny of its application design. The Commission on Feb. 19 opened a probe into the social media company under the Digital Services Act (DSA) over its potentially addictive algorithm, prompting fears about the mental health and potential radicalization of teenagers. The probe, which might take several months, could result in orders to change the algorithm, fines or even a ban.
TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, also has until March 6 to comply with its new obligations under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which it fears could result in the disclosure of “highly strategic information concerning TikTok’s user profiling practices.”
But with only months to go before Europeans head to the polls, and with campaigns ramping up across the bloc, politicians are finding they'd rather embrace the app and its many users than find fault with it.
“The fears around security risks are still there but it's become a kind of ... living-with-it situation,” said Julian Jaursch, digital policy expert at the Berlin-based Stiftung Neue Verantwortung think tank.