The regulator has taken over 450 court fences against Telegram
The messaging app Telegram is being scrutinized by the Belgian telecommunications regulator to see if the platform complies with EU rules on combating terrorist content online.
The Belgian Institute for Post and Telecommunications (BIPT) said in its annual report published last week that it received notifications of 454 cross-border injunctions, or notifications, last year that concerned content provided through Telegram’s hosting services.
“Given the large number of Telegram users and the number of injunctions issued against Telegram, the BIPT conducted an in-depth investigation into Telegram’s compliance with the Terrorist Content Online (TCO) Regulation in 2024,” the report says, adding that the regulator will continue this work in 2025 and extend its oversight to other hosting service providers under its jurisdiction.
The BIPT plans to identify hosting providers as being “exposed to terrorist content online” as early as this year, the report said.
Telegram is registered as a company in the British Virgin Islands, but has a legal representative in the EU in Brussels, which means that BIPT oversees the platform’s compliance.
The TCO rules came into force in June 2022 and oblige hosting providers to remove terrorist content online within one hour of receiving a takedown order from a national authority of an EU member state.
In case of non-compliance, the BIPT may impose a financial penalty of 4% of the provider’s global turnover.
A Telegram spokesperson told Euronews that “requests related to TCO have the highest priority.”
“[They] are processed within one hour of receipt, and a response is provided to the authorities as soon as possible. In 2024, Telegram removed 549 pieces of TCO-related content, and in 2025, 128 pieces, acting on TCO requests,” the spokeswoman said.
“This is in addition to Telegram’s own proactive moderation and cooperation with the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology (Etidal), which resulted in the removal of more than 108,000 terrorism-related communities in the first half of 2025 alone,” the company added.
Telegram has been banned by governments in several countries due to cases of spreading disinformation and promoting extremism. For example, in the UK, the app was used to plan and coordinate anti-immigrant riots in August last year.
Last year, its co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov was detained near Paris as part of an investigation into alleged crimes related to the messenger, such as organized crime and drug trafficking.
BIPT also oversees Telegram’s compliance with EU rules on online platforms, the Digital Services Act (DSA).
Telegram claims to have an average monthly audience of 41 million users in the EU, which is below the threshold of 45 million per month required to be considered a very large online platform (VLOP) and subject to inspection by the European Commission.
The BIPT reported that it had received about 10 complaints related to possible violations of the DSA, “most of which concerned Telegram.” The report says that BIPT is working with the Dutch and Estonian authorities to address these concerns.
