Ireland’s Supreme Court upheld an order allowing TikTok to continue certain practices while the Data Protection Commission pursues its case.
A Supreme Court ruling has kept TikTok’s operations in Ireland moving while a major dispute with the Data Protection Commission continues.
The Supreme Court upheld a decision that allows the social media company to continue operating in Ireland as the DPC pursues claims over how TikTok handles users’ personal data.. The focus of the fight centers on the DPC’s allegation that user data could be accessed by engineers in China, alongside claims of alleged breaches under EU privacy rules.
In this context, the wording of the ruling matters: it concerns how courts decide whether to pause enforcement orders, rather than finally settling the underlying privacy allegations.
The DPC had sanctioned TikTok and directed it to pay a fine of €530 million, while also ordering it to stop making user data accessible in China.. TikTok challenged that outcome through the courts, and after it obtained a stay on those orders, the DPC brought its own challenge to the basis for granting the stay.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court dismissed the DPC’s appeal in a decision delivered by a five-judge bench. The court held that the legal test for assessing whether a stay should be granted is a matter governed by national law, not EU law, as questioned in the DPC’s argument.
This matters for regulators and companies alike because it signals how procedural and balancing tests for regulatory enforcement can be framed within domestic legal rules.
In his judgment, Mr Justice Brian Murray described the approach for deciding on a stay as involving a balance between irreparable harm to the company if the stay is not granted and the impact on the public interest or the rights of third parties.. The court’s reasoning, as Misryoum understands it from the published account, focused on that balancing exercise.
Mr Justice Gerard Hogan, concurring, said the issue raised by the commission about whether Irish law had been displaced by EU law did not succeed.. He also noted that the decision concerning TikTok’s reprimand was made by the DPC as the lead supervisory authority, rather than being based on decisions from other authorities.
At the end of the process so far, Misryoum reports that the stay has remained in place after earlier High Court consideration. Last February, Mr Justice Rory Mulcahy maintained the stay on the €530 million fine and indicated there was no hesitation in granting the order sought.
Insight-wise, the dispute is still only part way through its legal pathway, meaning the underlying allegations about privacy and data access practices are not treated as resolved by the Supreme Court’s ruling on the stay.