TikTok has been ordered to pay €530 million (around $600 million) for sending European users’ data to servers in China, a breach of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). TikTok has six months to bring its data processing into compliance, pending any possible appeal.
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) found that TikTok violated GDPR laws because it couldn’t guarantee that data transferred to China would be protected to a standard equivalent to the EU’s. The court singled out China’s anti-terrorism and counter-espionage laws as potential risks that Chinese authorities could access European users’ data.
The video app was fined €485 million for sending the data to China, and €45 million for its privacy policy failing to adequately explain the data transfers. TikTok updated its privacy policy in 2022, and the court deemed that new policy “compliant.” The company has also promised to invest €12 billion (about $13.6 billion) in data centers in the EU, but that wasn’t enough to sway the court.
Throughout the inquiry TikTok insisted that user data was only remotely accessed from China, and not stored on servers there. Last month the company informed the court that it had discovered that “limited” European data had in fact been stored in China, and has since been deleted. DPC deputy commissioner Graham Doyle warned that “further regulatory action” may be required for that additional breach.
This is the third-largest GDPR fine yet, with only Meta and Amazon ordered to pay more. TikTok, which has its European headquarters in Ireland, has already been given a hefty GDPR penalty from the Irish court before, receiving a $367 million bill in 2023 for how it processes children’s data.
The ruling comes as TikTok’s US business remains in limbo. The app was banned in the US over fears surrounding its data security and possible control by Chinese authorities, and will have to find a US buyer to continue operating. Last month Donald Trump signed a second 75-day pause on the ban, as his ongoing trade war with China appears to have delayed efforts to negotiate a sale of the app’s US arm with Chinese owner ByteDance.
