European Commission and Council prohibit installing TikTok to their workers

Euskaraz irakurri: Europako Batzordeak eta Kontseiluak debekatu egin diete langileei TikTok instalatzea

The European Commission and the European Council have prohibited their employees on Thursday from installing the Chinese application TikTok on their official mobile phones, alleging reasons of “security”just as the United States Congress has done with its workers.

Sonya Gospodinova, spokesperson for the Community Executive, has said that the decision has been “carefully analyzed” and has been adopted to “protect the European Commission against cybersecurity threats and against actions that can be exploited against carrying out attacks”, although he has avoided giving details about whether there has been any specific attack that has motivated the ban.

Brussels, however, will “constantly” review the measure, so in the future it could be “reversible”noted Gospodinova.

TikTok has considered, for its part, that this suspension “is wrong and is based on fundamental misconceptions,” a company spokesperson said.

“Us surprise that the Commission has not contacted us directly and offered us no explanation: we have requested a meeting to set the record straight, on how we protect the data of the 125 million people across the EU who visit TikTok every month “added the spokesperson.

In addition to TikTok, the Commission has already banned the video calling application Zoombut it does allow other similar ones like Skype for Business or Webex.