Albania’s Rama hints at softening of TikTok ban

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, who in December announced a year-long ban on TikTok, said this week he had held “open and constructive” talks with the social media platform.Rama had said of the Chinese-owned platform that Tirana would “chase this thug out of our neighbourhood” when announcing the ban, due to last the whole of 2025.

He also announced that the government would launch programmes to “serve the education of students and help parents follow their children’s journey”.

But following discussions with Christine Grahn, one of TikTok’s top officials in Europe, he suggested a change of policy was possible.

“We discussed the concerns that led us to temporarily suspend access to the platform in Albania,” Rama said on his Facebook account on Tuesday.

It was “a fully open and constructive discussion, during which we established several collaboration milestones for the coming weeks and months… otherwise we will be obliged to maintain the closure of access to the platform,” added Rama, who met Grahn at Davos.

TikTok sources on Wednesday indicated to AFP that “it was a constructive meeting with agreement to work with the government to address any concerns”.The blocking of the controversial social network came less than a month after a 14-year-old student was killed and another injured in a fight near a school in Tirana.

The fight had developed from an online confrontation on social media.

The killing sparked a debate in the country among parents, psychologists and educational institutions about the impact of social networks on young people.

“In China, TikTok promotes how students can take courses, how to protect nature, how to keep traditions,” Rama said in December.

“But on the TikTok outside China we see only scum and mud. Why do we need this?”

After TikTok demanded an explanation for the ban, Rama replied that the platform had “no grounds to demand clarifications from Albania”.

Rama’s apparent about-turn came two days after US President Donald Trump signed a decree suspending for 75 days a ban on TikTok, whose owners have been ordered by the US Congress to sell the platform or see it definitively barred from the country.