High Court issues first judgment in TikTok’s €530m fine appeal

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

The High Court has issued the first of two intended judgments in TikTok’s appeal against €530 million in fines imposed by the Data Protection Commission over transfers of EEA users’ personal data to China. Mr Justice Rory Mulcahy delivered the judgment on 3 June 2026.

TikTok argued that the DPC could not find an infringement or impose a sanction without first carrying out its own assessment of whether the transferred data had essentially equivalent protection in China. The court rejected that interpretation, holding that TikTok had to carry out an adequate assessment and be able to demonstrate compliance with the GDPR.

The judgment leaves the appeal partly unresolved: a further judgment on Grounds 7, 8 and 9, concerning how any administrative fine should be calculated, was to follow.