Chinese social media platform TikTok has reportedly opened a branch in Romania, following public criticism, along with governmental and EU-level scrutiny, after Romania’s last presidential elections.

The local company is called Tik Tok Romania, has a share capital of RON 5,000, and provides other IT-related service activities. It will be managed by Laura Andreea Savu, according to ONRC data consulted by Economica.net in the Official Gazette.

TikTok, which is the fastest-growing social media platform locally, with around 9 million users in Romania, came under fire after the 2024 presdiential elections because authorities could not engage effectively with company representatives. 

After the cancelled elections in December 2024, the European Commission launched an investigation into the Chinese platform for its alleged inability to prevent interference. The Brussels executive recently informed TikTok of its preliminary opinion that the company is not meeting its obligation under the Digital Services Act (DSA) to publish an ad registry. Such a registry is essential for researchers and civil society to detect misleading ads, hybrid threat campaigns, coordinated information operations, and fake ads, especially in the election context. 

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25 April 2025

Politics

TikTok launches Election Center ahead of Romania’s May presidential vote

Other problems were uncovered by independent researchers. In May of this year, weeks ahead of the elections, a report by cybersecurity company Refute uncovered a large-scale international influence operation targeting Romanian diaspora voters on TikTok. The report identified approximately 32,500 TikTok videos containing slogans promoting the populist candidate George Simion and former candidate Călin Georgescu. 

This year, TikTok implemented internal changes in an attempt to protect Romania’s rerun of the presidential elections, which took place on May 4 and 18. For example, the company launched an Election Center to promote access to reliable information, and closed tens of thousands of suspicious accounts.

Recently, the platform also posted a job opening for a Government Relations and Public Policy Manager in Romania, according to Profit.ro.

The opening comes as Romania aims to compel online platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and X, to take measures to protect minors under the age of 18 from harmful content distributed on their platforms. Failure to comply could result in fines ranging from 0.5% to 3% of global annual turnover. 

These platforms will be required to verify age and restrict minors’ access to certain content, ensure active parental control and monthly reports to parents, and respond within a maximum of 2 hours to any notification issued by a competent authority regarding harmful content accessed by a minor. 

TikTok is set to surpass Facebook, which dominated social media in Romania so far, in the coming period. 

radu@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Bongkarn Thanyakij | Dreamstime.com)