Brussels, (EFE).- The European Commission on Thursday prohibited its employees from installing the Chinese application TikTok on their official mobile phones before March 15, alleging “security” reasons, just as the United States Congress has done with its workers.
“The Commission’s Corporate Board of Directors has decided to suspend the use of the TikTok mobile application on its official devices,” said Sonya Gospodinova, spokesperson for the Community Executive.
As he explained, the decision has been “carefully analyzed” and has been adopted to “protect the European Commission against threats to cybersecurity and against actions that can be exploited against carrying out attacks”, although he avoided giving details about whether there have been any concrete attack that has motivated the prohibition.
This is a measure “based on the assessment that the European Commission has made of the situation and we are not going to give more details,” said the institution’s chief spokesman, Eric Mamer, who stated that the institution receives cyberattacks “on a regular basis ”, although he avoided giving further explanations for security reasons.
“Since the beginning of the mandate, the European Commission has had a strong interest in cybersecurity,” said European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton.
Brussels, however, will “constantly” review the measure, so that in the future it could be “reversible”, Gospodinova pointed out.
TikTok considered, for its part, that this suspension “is wrong and is based on fundamental misconceptions,” a company spokesperson told EFE.
“We are surprised that the Commission has not contacted us directly or offered us any 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,” the spokesperson added.
Not due to an “immediate threat”
“I can reassure you that there is no immediate threat but we are constantly monitoring the situation. It is no secret that we are under an increased cybersecurity threat and therefore we have to take measures to prevent anything in the future,” said Commissioner for Budget and Administration Johannes Hahn, whose department made the decision.
“I know that it has created a lot of excitement but it is part of our daily work,” added the commissioner, in statements made to a small group of media, including EFE.
The measure has also been taken to “protect” and “train” the staff of the European Commission, where 30,000 people work.