Can EU officials continue to use Telegram?

In the wake of the French crackdown on Russian messaging app Telegram, the European Commission said it does not restrict its officials from using the application.

“The only platform that is banned from corporate devices is TikTok,” a spokesperson for the institution confirmed to Euronews.

France arrested the app’s CEO Pavel Durov last Saturday as part of an investigation into Telegram for allegedly not curbing offences such as fraud, drug trafficking, organised crime and promotion of terrorism on the platform.

The country’s President Emmanuel Macron insisted earlier this week (26 August) that the arrest was not political, and that France is “deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication”.

Moscow has accused France of double standards over free speech and numerous questions have been raised about the reasons and circumstances of his arrest. 

The encrypted messaging app, founded in 2013 with its global headquarters in Dubai, is widely used by politicians, including by Macron himself.

Dutch MEP Bart Groothuis (Renew), a former head of cybersecurity at the Dutch Defence Ministry and a member of the European Parliament’s Industry and Trade committees, told Euronews that the use of the app is questionable. 

“I think that Telegram is an insecure app because of the fact that it’s created by people from Russia, and on which the Russian state can have some leverage. Telegram holds the encryption keys of secure chats, which means that the Russian state might have access to that. I think it’s disturbing,” he said. 

Groothuis added that “it would not be wise for civil servants, ministers or senior politicians to have such apps on their private phones.”

An official of the Council of the EU said that there are “no special restrictions on the use of Telegram in the Council General Secretariat’s work devices by its staff.” It does not have a Telegram account for public communication.

Among the countries that imposed restrictions are Switzerland, where the army is banned from using it, and the Netherlands, where Amsterdam city administration’s public officials can no longer use it because of the spread of disinformation, cyber threats and the rise of drug trafficking. 

TikTok

In February 2023, EU Commission officials were banned from using TikTok, owned by China’s Bytedance, on their work phones and on personal devices enrolled within the institution’s mobile service for cybersecurity reasons.

“This measure aims to protect the Commission against cybersecurity threats and actions which may be exploited for cyber-attacks against the corporate environment of the Commission,” the EU executive said in a statement at the time, adding that the security developments of other social media platforms will also be kept under constant review.

Groothuis said that Telegram’s own cryptography keys are not tested and used by others around the world.

“We don’t know what kind of leverage this company has with built-in backdoors or if Russian security services are exerting leverage on that. It’s a very different security threat compared to other apps. So I would say, yes, it needs to be banned just like we’ve banned TikTok.”

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In a move similar to the Commission, the Parliament “strongly recommended” that lawmakers and their assistants remove TikTok from their personal devices, however some of the political groups, such as the social-democrat S&D group and the Left (GUE/NGL) do use the app for their campaigns.