The European Commission will continue its data collection efforts regarding TikTok in relation to the Romanian presidential election

Tuesday, Jan 27, 2026

EU Commission investigates alleged election interference, but Romanian MEP’s criticize slow progress and bureaucratic pace.

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[This is an automatically generated summary, for reference only]

The European Commission extended an investigation into the first and second rounds of elections held in May 2025, but no substantive progress has been made since then. In response to inquiries from two Romanian MEP representatives regarding the investigation’s progress, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated that her body is closely monitoring the case and has initiated proceedings against X, Meta, and TikTok under the Digital Services Act due to suspected interference in the elections. Following this action, TikTok announced several changes, stating it will more strictly monitor user account identification and activity after Romanian events, increasing its experts working on the Romanian network, with a current 120-person team examining potential hidden influence campaigns that altered algorithm operations two years ago. However, Vlad Voiculescu and Dan Barna criticized the investigation as “unacceptably slow” and deemed the Commission’s response time “dangerous to European democracy,” arguing that the prolonged inquiry represents a systemic failure because voter deception and electoral interference continue to affect Romanian politics, asserting that democracy cannot be defended at the pace of bureaucratic correspondence.


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