France will ban the use of the video-sharing app TikTok owned by a Chinese company on the work phones of civil servants, Civil Service Minister Stanislas Guerini said on his Twitter account.
“In order to protect the cybersecurity of our departments and civil servants, the government has decided to ban entertainment applications such as TikTok on the work phones of civil servants,” he said in a statement.
He added that several weeks ago, the administrations of many of France’s European and international partners adopted measures to restrict or ban the download and installation of the TikTok application.
The entertainment apps do not have sufficient levels of cybersecurity and data protection measures for use on government employees’ phones, Guerini said, adding that the ban is in effect with immediate effect and that government agencies will monitor compliance.
He noted that there might be exceptions for professional reasons.
A number of Western governments and institutions have banned the application of TikTok in the past weeks, such as the British Parliament, the Dutch and Belgian governments, and the New Zealand parliament.
Late last month, the EU’s two largest policy-making bodies, the European Commission and the Council of the European Union, banned TikTok on employees’ phones on cybersecurity grounds.
Concerns have escalated globally about the possibility of Chinese government access to users’ locations and contact data through ByteDance, the owner of TikTok.