TikTok under new Irish investigation after admitting EU user data reached China
The Data Protection Commission (DPC) has announced that it will launch a new investigation into TikTok’s transfer of European users’ personal data to servers in China.
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The Data Protection Commission (DPC) has announced that it will launch a new investigation into TikTok’s transfer of European users’ personal data to servers in China.
The inquiry follows the DPC’s decision of April 30th, 2025, which also considered TikTok’s transfers of European users’ personal data to China under a separate inquiry.
TikTok was hit with a €530 million fine for failing to show that European users’ personal data was afforded the same high level of protection provided for under European law.
In addition, some European users’ information was remotely accessed by TikTok staff members in China.
Lastly, TikTok claimed that no data from European users was stored on Chinese servers, but later had to admit that there was.
The Irish DPA expressed concerns that TikTok had submitted inaccurate information to that inquiry. The DPC stated that it was “considering what further regulatory action may be warranted, in consultation with our peer EU Data Protection Authorities.”
As a result of that consideration, the DPC has now decided to open this new inquiry into TikTok.
The Irish data protection authority (DPA) is currently focusing its investigation on whether TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, breached rules of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by providing misinformation.
According to the DPC’s press release, the purpose of the investigation is to determine whether TikTok has complied with its relevant obligations under the GDPR in the context of the transfers now at issue, including the lawfulness of the transfers.
In addition, the DPC will check TikTok’s compliance with providing transparency information regarding third-country data transfers. Europe’s data protection and privacy regulation, among other things, requires companies to be transparent about where data resides and mandates cooperation with investigations.
TikTok has already appealed against the fine the DPC imposed last April. According to the platform, the DPA’s decision mainly related to a practice that it abandoned long ago. The company referred to Project Clover, an initiative in which TikTok plans to invest €12 billion to build data centers within the EU, where it will store the data of European users.