The European Commission does not impose restrictions, at the moment. But it will be necessary to see if there is a change after the trial in France of Pavel Durov, CEO of Telegram. The EU banned its officials from using TikTok in 2023.
In the wake of French measures against the Russian messaging application Telegram, The European Commission has declared that it does not restrict the use of this application to its officials. “The only platform that is prohibited on corporate devices is TikTok,” a spokesperson for the institution confirmed to ‘Euronews’.
France arrested the CEO of the app last Saturday, Pavel Durovwithin the framework of an investigation into Telegram for allegedly not braking crimes such as fraud, drug trafficking, organized crime and the promotion of terrorism on the platform.
The country’s president, Emmanuel Macron, insisted earlier this week (August 26) in which the arrest was not political and that France is “deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication.”
Moscow has France accused of double standards on freedom of expression and numerous questions have been raised about the reasons and circumstances of his detention.
The encrypted messaging app, founded in 2013 by Pavel Durov and his brother, and with global headquarters in Dubai, It is widely used by politicians, including Macron himself.
Dutch MEP Bart Groothuis (Renewal), former head of cybersecurity at the Dutch Ministry of Defense and member of the Industry and Trade committees of the European Parliament, has told ‘Euronews’ that the use of the app is questionable.
“I think Telegram is an unsafe app because it is created by people from Russiaand over which the Russian State may have some influence. Telegram keeps the encryption keys for secure chats, which means that the Russian state could have access to that. I think it’s worrying,” she stated.
Groothuis added that “It would not be prudent for high-level officials, ministers or politicians to have these types of applications on their private phones.”
Among the countries that imposed restrictions There are Switzerland, where the army is prohibited from using it, and the Netherlands, where Amsterdam city administration officials they can’t use it anymore due to the spread of misinformation, cyber threats and the rise of drug trafficking.
TikTok case: It ended in a ban
In February 2023 banned European Commission officials from using TikTokowned by the Chinese company Bytedance, on its work phones and on personal devices enrolled in the institution’s mobile service for cybersecurity reasons.
“This measure aims to protect the Commission against cybersecurity threats and actions that can be exploited for cyber attacks against the corporate environment of the Commission,” the Community Executive then said in a statement, in which it added that the evolution of the security of other social media platforms will also be constantly reviewed.
Groothuis said that Telegram’s own cryptographic keys are not tested and used by others around the world.
“We don’t know what kind of influence this company has with the built-in backdoors or if the Russian security services are influencing it. It is a very different security threat than other applications. So I would say yes, we have to ban it just like we have banned TikTok“.
In a move similar to that of the Commission, Parliament “strongly recommended” that Lawmakers and their aides will remove TikTok of their personal devices, although some of the political groups, such as the social democratic S&D and the European United Left (GUE/NGL) They do use the application for their campaigns.
