The European Commission has banned the installation of the TikTok application on all its staff's professional devices in order to protect the institution's data, one of its spokespersons announced on Thursday, a decision immediately denounced by the Chinese social network. . Civil servants and employees of the European executive have been asked to uninstall the application from their professional devices by March 15 at the latest, the spokesperson said, confirming information from the online site Euractiv.
The measure was advocated by the institution's IT department in order to "protect the Commission's data and strengthen its cybersecurity", he stressed. "As an institution, the European Commission has, from the beginning of its mandate, focused on cybersecurity, the protection of its employees and all those who work" for the institution, observed the Commissioner for Industry Thierry Breton in front of the press.
He declined to give details: "We are obviously under no obligation to give the reasons why we take (such) decisions in the interest of our own colleagues, the proper functioning of the institutions and its preservation", he insisted. The European Commission has also asked its employees to uninstall the TikTok app from their personal devices, including phones, when official apps are installed on them, including email and video conferencing apps.
"We are disappointed with this decision, which we believe is wrong and based on misconceptions," a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement. TikTok, whose parent company ByteDance is Chinese, has come under increasing scrutiny from Westerners in recent months over fears over Beijing's access to user data.
The US administration has banned the app on federal government devices, and some US lawmakers are trying to ban TikTok from operating in the United States. The company admitted last November that some staff in China could access European user data.
TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew traveled to Brussels in January for talks with EU officials, as Brussels shows concern for ensuring European users' data security. He later spoke with Thierry Breton.
"During this dense conversation we had, I told him about the issues around data security, potential data transfer on their services, and let him know some questions we might have," recalled the commissioner on Thursday. Mr Shou had assured EU officials that his company was working on a "robust" system to process the data of Europeans in Europe, according to a Commission spokesperson.
