Romania asks EU to investigate TikTok’s election handling after ultranationalist’s stunning win

Romanian officials have alarmed the European Union’s powerful social media regulator about irregularities on TikTok during the first round of the national presidential election.

The national media regulator Ancom informed the European Commission as recently as Tuesday that TikTok had “not acted swiftly” to requests to secure the election, it said in a press release.

European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier confirmed it had received a request to open “a formal investigation into TikTok’s role in the Romanian elections” under its flagship social media law, the Digital Services Act (DSA). “We are closely monitoring developments,” Regnier said, adding that the EU “can open proceedings” if it has “evidence at our disposal.”

TikTok is under mounting pressure to explain how it handled political content in Romania after a first round presidential vote on Sunday propelled the ultranationalist, pro-Russian firebrand Călin Georgescu to a shock victory, in part thanks to his sudden surge on TikTok. A top EU lawmaker demanded on Tuesday that TikTok’s chief executive appear before the European Parliament to answer questions, and Romanian NGOs have urged the Commission to look into whether TikTok and other platforms complied with Europe’s social media laws.

The European Commission oversees TikTok’s compliance with the bloc’s new DSA rulebook, which sets the rules for how large online platforms moderate content, including in political campaigns.

The issues were already “brought to the attention of the European Commission … in recent months” and again on Tuesday, the Romanian regulator said.

Officials had flagged “various irregularities related to the illegally distributed content” to TikTok and requested the platform to take measures to make sure the election was held “under legal conditions,” but the platform had not responded adequately, it said.

The Romanian case puts the European Commission in a tough spot, as investigating TikTok’s role in how the vote went down could be seen as interfering in national elections. Romanians are scheduled to head to the polls for a parliament election this weekend and a second round of its presidential vote on Dec. 8.

“The Commission does not interfere in national elections and seeks to ensure within its competences a level playing field for all candidates,” Regnier said.

Researchers are now picking apart just how Georgescu — who gathered more than 370,000 followers on his TikTok account — managed his sudden rise in the polls, picking apart the activity around his online profile.

“We believed that Tiktok was misused and was led to be misused by him and an army of fake accounts that were used for his purpose,” said Bogdan Manolea, executive director of the Romanian campaign group, Association for Technology and Internet.

Others pointed at the use of influencers that would not have labeled their content as paid advertising. Paid political advertising is prohibited by TikTok.

Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu weighed in on Tuesday, saying funding for Georgescu’s campaign on TikTok needed to be reviewed: “It’s a system, I don’t know how legal it is, I understood how the system was used. The source of financing, in my opinion, is to be followed, ‘follow the money.'”

In a statement, TikTok’s spokesperson in Brussels, Paolo Ganino, said the “highly speculative reports about the Romanian elections are inaccurate and misleading, as most candidates have established a TikTok presence and the winners campaigned on other digital platforms beyond ours.”

Ganino added that the platform “proactively partnered with the Electoral Commission to launch an in-app Election Center to elevate reliable election information to our community in Romania. We do not accept paid political ads and require everyone to abide by our Community Guidelines which we enforce on an ongoing basis.”

Nicholas Vinocur contributed reporting.