TikTok holds its End Of Year Event 2022 in Milan, Italy, on Dec. 13.
Claudio Lavenia | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
TikTok is beginning to feel the sting of political and regulatory pressure in Europe, where the Chinese-owned app has largely evaded the scrutiny it’s faced in the U.S.
EU Commissioner of the Internal Market Thierry Breton warned TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in a meeting this month the bloc could ban the app if it didn’t comply with new rules on digital content well ahead of a Sep. 1 deadline.
That’s a marked shift from the EU’s near silence on TikTok, while U.S. lawmakers have been aggressive — banning the app from federal devices in December over national security concerns. A proposed bipartisan bill also seeks to block the app from operating in the U.S.
It’s not that the EU is soft on tech. Europe has fined U.S. tech giants for violating the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.
The difference with TikTok is that the app has kept out of the crosshairs of commercial interests in Europe.
“There is no political demand for investigation into Chinese entities,” Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, the director of think tank the European Centre for International Political Economy, said in an interview in December.
“The user base of TikTok is a lot bigger than a lot of people in Europe think,” he said. But, he added, “you’re not going to look very closely if they don’t steal too much from your ad revenue.”
TikTok had about 275 million monthly active users in Europe as of December, according to Sensor Tower’s Abe Yousef, noting that’s more than one third of Europe’s population of about 750 million.
The data dragon TikTok must be placed under the surveillance of the European authorities. Europe must finally wake up.
Moritz Korner
MEP, European Parliament
TikTok was the most-downloaded social media app last year in Italy and Spain, according to data.ai, formerly called App Annie. The app held second place in France and Germany, the data showed.
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