The President of the General Court of the European Union has rejected the request by the Chinese company ByteDance, which runs the TikTok platform, to suspend the Commission’s decision of September 2023 designating it as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), in an order issued on Friday 9 February (see EUROPE 13244/3).
In November 2023, ByteDance lodged an appeal seeking the annulment of this decision, as well as an application for interim measures seeking the suspension of the said decision.
In today’s order, the President of the General Court dismissed this application for interim relief, without ruling on the merits.
In particular, ByteDance argued that the immediate implementation of the contested decision could result in the disclosure of highly strategic information concerning TikTok’s user profiling practices. Communicating this information to competitors and other third parties would significantly harm the platform’s activities.
However, according to the President of the General Court, ByteDance has not demonstrated that there is a real risk of disclosure of confidential information or that such a risk would give rise to serious and irreparable harm. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)