EU meets the moment on TikTok and the Romanian election.

EU institutions are bringing out the big guns when it comes to TikTok’s handling of election content.

The European Commission on Tuesday announced a formal investigation into how the platform manages risks to elections —specifically in Romania — while the Parliament will hold a three-hour debate on TikTok, X and elections later on Tuesday.

TikTok’s alleged violation of the Digital Services Act follows accusations from Romanian authorities of “irregularities” on its platform, after the shock victory of ultranationalist, pro-Russia candidate Călin Georgescu in the first round of Romania’s presidential election in late November. Romania’s top court later annulled the election.

“Following serious indications that foreign actors interfered in the Romanian presidential elections by using TikTok, we are now thoroughly investigating whether TikTok has violated the Digital Services Act by failing to tackle such risks,” said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a statement — a rare public comment from the EU chief on such an investigation.

The Commission will specifically investigate TikTok’s recommender systems for “coordinated inauthentic manipulation or automated exploitation of the service,” as well as the platform’s policies on political ads and paid political content, the Commission said in a press release.

Research from local and international organizations has pointed to influencer campaigns and bots propping up Georgescu on the app that were not properly addressed.

TikTok has denied that it didn’t manage risk properly. “We’ve protected the integrity of our platform through over 150 elections around the world and continue proactively addressing these industry-wide challenges,” a TikTok spokesperson said. “TikTok has provided the European Commission with extensive information regarding these efforts, and we have transparently and publicly detailed our robust actions.”

The spokesperson added that the app didn’t accept paid political advertising and “proactively removed content for violating our policies on misinformation, harassment and hate speech.”

Earlier in December, the Commission ordered TikTok to retain all data related to election risk management for four months, starting Nov. 24 and running through March. The platform also submitted a response to formal questions on elections on Dec. 16.

This is TikTok’s third investigation under the DSA; one remains open, while another was closed after the platform made commitments to the Commission.