The Irish Data Protection Commission Fines TikTok €530 Million for GDPR Violations

On 2 May 2025, a final decision was issued by the Irish Data Protection Commission ("DPC") following an inquiry initiated into TikTok Technology Limited. The inquiry was conducted to assess the lawfulness of TikTok’s transfers of personal data belonging to users in the European Economic Area ("EEA") to the People’s Republic of China, and whether TikTok’s transparency obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") had been fulfilled.

It has been determined that TikTok has failed to ensure an adequate level of protection for the personal data of EEA users accessed from China and has not complied with the transparency obligations set out under the GDPR. As a result, an administrative fine amounting to €530 million has been imposed, and the company has been ordered to align its data processing operations with the GDPR within six months. Should the company fail to comply with this order, the suspension of data transfers to China may be enforced.

The decision was finalized under the GDPR cooperation mechanism and has been adopted without objections from other EU supervisory authorities. 

The full decision text will be made publicly available in due course.

You can access the announcement by the DPC here.

Kind regards,

Zumbul Attorneys-at-Law

info@zumbul.av.tr

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