By Niamh Ellis
The Supreme Court has left in place a High Court stay preventing two parts of the Data Protection Commission's enforcement decision against TikTok from taking effect while TikTok's statutory appeal is determined.
The DPC decided on 30 April 2025 that TikTok had infringed GDPR rules concerning transfers of European users' personal data to China and information given to users about those transfers. It ordered TikTok to suspend the transfers, bring its processing into compliance and pay administrative fines of €485 million and €45 million.
The fines were automatically stayed once TikTok appealed. The High Court separately stayed the suspension and compliance orders, prompting the DPC's appeal to the Supreme Court.
A central issue was which legal test governed that stay. The DPC argued that an EU-law test derived from the Zuckerfabrik case should apply because its decision had EU-wide effects. Mr Justice Brian Murray rejected that argument, holding that national procedural law governs the application because the challenged decision is that of an Irish supervisory authority and its validity is ultimately for the Irish courts to determine.
The Supreme Court also reformulated the Irish approach for stays of regulatory decisions with wider public effect. It said such orders should be exceptional and would normally require the challenger to demonstrate a strong case likely to succeed at trial, not merely an arguable one.
However, the court did not decide whether TikTok had met that stronger threshold. By the time of judgment, the full High Court appeal had already been heard.
The Supreme Court instead dismissed the DPC's appeal and allowed the existing stay to continue unless the DPC asks the High Court to revisit it.
The judgment records that implementing the DPC decision could require major restructuring of TikTok's operations, while the DPC's decision itself did not find that Chinese law definitively failed to provide equivalent protection for the data. The substantive GDPR appeal remains for the High Court to decide.