MADRID — Trailing in the polls ahead of Nov. 29 national elections, Spain’s ruling Socialist Party is turning to TikTok. Not to use it, but to try to ban it. 

Following the publication on Monday of a Spanish investigation accusing TikTok of allowing child sexual abuse material, the youth ministry announced it would try to block the platform.

On Wednesday the prosecutor’s office opened a preliminary inquiry, prompting a triumphant post on X by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. “Great news,” he wrote. “The days of impunity on social media are over. No platform is above the law, and much less above the rights of our children.”

The bombshell report by civil society group Maldita has shocked Spain and given the government a chance to show it’s tough on Big Tech just ahead of a momentous election, with polls showing the right firmly ahead.

Over the past 72 hours the government has pulled every available legal lever against TikTok, including lodging cases with both the Data Protection Agency and the public prosecutor’s office.

The reality that EU legal thresholds for shutting off open platforms are relatively high isn’t slowing the public onslaught. In a TV interview aired Monday after Maldita’s investigation was released, Sánchez cast his government as a bulwark against Big Tech. “If we have to suspend a social media platform in Spain, have no doubt that we’ll do so,” he said.

TikTok says the company moved quickly to identify and remove content after the Maldita report was published. “CSAM (child sexual abuse material) is categorically prohibited on our platform, and we deploy advanced detection technologies alongside a dedicated Child Safety Team to aggressively identify and eliminate it,” a TikTok spokesperson said. “As bad actors continuously adapt their tactics, we work tirelessly to improve our safeguards.”

Sánchez has every reason to turn the conversation toward protecting children and holding foreign tech companies accountable after sagging in the polls following last month’s train crash in Toledo that killed 69 people. The Socialist leader explained this week that his government was pushing to enforce the “criminal liability of the leaders of these platforms.”

Still, the points Sánchez is looking to score by targeting Big Tech may be limited because his main opponent also slammed TikTok for failing to act.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the conservative People’s Party and current favorite to be Spain’s next prime minister, met on Tuesday with Maldita’s team. “It’s shocking, and we can’t look the other way,” he wrote on X. “We have a duty to protect children, and this is one of my top priorities for families.” 

Borja Sémper, a key PP lawmaker who attended the meeting between Feijóo and the investigative team, said: “What’s happening on TikTok is unacceptable. We’re not going to let this go.”

The Socialist Party has positioned itself as Spain’s toughest voice against the platforms, and Sánchez has made clashes with “techno-oligarchs” a key campaign calling card. 

A spokesperson for Spain’s digital ministry pointed to the PP and the far-right Vox as partly responsible for the inaction over TikTok, given that they voted against the government’s designation of the National Markets and Competition Commission as the regulator of digital services. By rejecting the motion, the spokesperson said, they deprived the state of “the tools to protect our children.”

Earlier this week, Youth Minister Sira Rego asked the country’s data protection watchdog to suspend TikTok. “If it were up to us, TikTok would have been shut down from the very moment we learned of the investigation,” said a ministry official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the issue. “But we don’t have the authority to do so.” 

The same official said the Ministry of Youth and Children had met with Spain’s TikTok team but hadn’t received a satisfactory response. “We asked them to voluntarily suspend their services in Spain,” the official said, adding the platform had only agreed to “look into it” without providing a timeline.

Bans are hard

The only way for the Spanish government to force a suspension of the service is to get a court order. The ministry has written to the State Attorney General’s Office to open an investigation that could lead to a suspension of operations, the official said. 

In 2024, Spanish judge Santiago Pedraz ordered Telegram to be blocked for three days before reversing his decision, ruling that the measure wasn’t proportionate. The precedent is there, and shows that although a ban is possible, it is also unlikely.

The current Spanish push isn’t the first time a European government facing tough elections has floated suspending an online platform in response to illegal content.

Just last month, the French government touted the suspension of social media amid widespread protests, but a constitutional court partly struck it down, saying it wasn’t in line with French law. Back in 2025 the Albanian government banned TikTok for just over a year, citing concerns over violence among children, although opposition parties accused the administration of trying to stifle criticism ahead of general elections.

But the constitutions of EU countries and bloc-wide rules don’t easily allow such measures. Laws to regulate big online platforms like TikTok are harmonized across the EU, which significantly limits what Madrid can do alone. 

The EU’s privacy rulebook, the General Data Protection Regulation, is enforced by national regulators. Ireland’s data protection authority oversees TikTok, which means the Youth Ministry’s request to Spain’s privacy regulator, the AEPD, is unlikely to go far. 

The AEPD cannot impose a permanent TikTok ban in Spain, but it could trigger what’s known as an “urgency procedure” under the GDPR. 

The emergency measure allows a privacy regulator to impose legally binding measures domestically that can last up to three months, where there is “urgent need to act” to protect people’s privacy rights.

The AEPD said that Ireland’s privacy regulator is the main authority responsible for TikTok’s compliance with privacy rules and said it will “share all available information with the Irish authority” and other European privacy regulators. 

The regulator said it has asked Maldita for a list of links to alleged unlawful processing of minors’ data, and asked TikTok what it has done to take down the reported content. 

TikTok’s wider content moderation practices are regulated by the Digital Services Act, which gives the European Commission oversight powers over big platforms. Brussels already has several probes open against TikTok and has said in preliminary findings that the Chinese-owned platform breaches the rules by failing to protect minors and by designing an addictive service, although it hasn’t issued any fines.

BRUSSELS — You know that customer-service bot that won’t let you cancel your subscription? The EU wants to kill it.  

With a new law presented Wednesday, the European Commission will take aim at the endless array of practices websites have used over the past 20 years to make more money from consumers.  

The Digital Fairness Act is the European response to a wider regulatory trend that has seen consumer authorities curb irksome and exploitative practices. These include dynamic pricing that changes ticket prices based on demand, cumbersome processes for canceling subscriptions and the near-complete surrender of customer service to automated systems.  

According to a draft of the DFA obtained by POLITICO, the Commission will address several aspects of the design, service and terms under which businesses interact with consumers online. 

“Europe should not accept a digital economy where profits depend on exploiting people’s vulnerabilities,” Spanish socialist lawmaker Laura Ballarín Cereza, a key European lawmaker on tech legislation, said in a statement.

Industry leaders have pushed back on this potential new rulebook ever since the EU executive began considering a revision of consumer law in 2022. They say current consumer protection and digital services laws already cover these practices. “Where existing rules already cover a practice, it should not be regulated or enforced a second time,” said Ben Brake, director general of tech lobby DOT Europe.  

Consumer groups say existing rules, some dating back to 2005, are not clear enough and that many unfair design practices are still rampant.  

The Commission would have the power to impose fines of up to 6% of global annual revenue for companies that violate the new law. Those penalties are similar to fines levied under the Digital Services Act, the EU’s platform rules meant to stop Big Tech platforms from provoking systemic, society-wide harms through everything from election interference to keeping minors away from violent content. The new law instead would apply to any business offering services to EU consumers online. 

Dark patterns

The DFA would ban deceptive design known as “dark patterns,” which manipulate consumers through the use of such tactics as bright-colored buttons placed prominently to get customers to buy something. It also aims to ban personalized pricing that targets vulnerable consumers, including minors.  

The practice of dynamic pricing is also targeted in the law. That’s when a seller adjusts the price based on conditions such as demand or a user’s location, and it is commonly used in the sale of concert and airline tickets. The proposed law requires transparency when customers are buying products whose prices are subject to change.  

The DFA also covers consumer rights around “agentic commerce,” when artificial intelligence agents are used to find and complete purchases. 

Four lawmakers from the conservative, socialist and liberal groups said the requirement doesn’t go far enough and that the DFA should completely ban dynamic pricing for cultural and sporting events, according to a letter obtained by POLITICO. 

Sellers offering subscriptions will have to provide an easy way to cancel, reminiscent of New York State’s “click to cancel” rules. The new EU rules also require that a human is available for after-sales customer support.  

The rules also address, for the first time, specific aspects of online gaming, including bans on video games that allow kids to pay to succeed and progress in the game.  

The DFA is also trying to make its mark on what is known as “addictive design” of online platforms. This has already been the target of enforcement action in Europe and litigation in the U.S. in cases involving minors. But the new consumer rules would apply to adults as well, requiring online platforms to offer an opt-out from addictive features like autoplay.  

Spain’s Ballarín Cereza thinks this is not enough, saying users should be opted out of these features by default. “Why should consumers carry the burden when companies deliberately design these addictive mechanisms? We must shift from consumer responsibility to corporate responsibility: safety and fairness must be the default, not an option,” she said. 

BRUSSELS — Royalty descended on the European Parliament on Tuesday as Prince Harry slammed Big Tech for creating a world of “chaos.”

“A handful of very powerful people … would like to see the world as a social media world: lawless, no consequence, complete chaos, division,” the Duke of Sussex said at an event on online safety for children.

Speaking in a room packed to the brim with journalists and photographers, Harry called for stricter rules on social media platforms to protect kids from content that could lead to suicide or self-harm.

He expressed reservations about the privacy policies of social media platforms, which he said bar parents from knowing how their children died. “That cannot be right,” a visibly upset Harry said.

His wife, Meghan Markle, was present but withdrew from an address on Tuesday’s panel.

The European Commission regulates online platforms through its Digital Services Act and is planning a special regime for minors under the Kids Act.

The burden of proof that platforms are safe should be on the companies rather than on parents, and “the EU Kids Act is exactly that,” said the prince, praising an EU proposal that would bar access to social media for under-13s.

The couple brought an air of celebrity to the Parliament, with heightened security and a clamoring press pack, including many journalists from the U.K. Dozens of parliament employees and lobbyists gathered outside the room, phones in hand, to catch a glimpse of the pair.

Meanwhile, the internal market committee, which is leading negotiations for the Parliament on the Kids Act, was meeting in a far less crowded room. MEPs from the committee — including Hungarian conservative Dóra Dávid and Slovak liberal Veronika Cifrová Ostrihoňová — attended the royal event.