Overview

• Ireland’s Data Protection Commission initiated the inquiry on July 10 to assess TikTok’s compliance with GDPR safeguards for transferring European user data to jurisdictions without EU adequacy status.
• Regulators imposed a €530 million fine in May after finding that Chinese staff could remotely access and store EU user information.
• As TikTok’s lead EU supervisor, the Irish watchdog oversees privacy enforcement for the 27-member bloc because the company’s European headquarters are in Dublin.
• Under GDPR rules, any transfer of EU personal data outside the bloc requires equivalent protections and China is not on the EU’s adequacy list.
• TikTok has rolled out Project Clover to localize data storage in Europe, but earlier audits revealed inconsistencies in its disclosures to regulators.