ByteDance's TikTok went before the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union on Tuesday in a last attempt to escape its designation as a “gatekeeper” under the Digital Markets Act, a label the company has fought since the Commission applied it in September 2023.
The hearing in Case C-627/24 P is the first DMA gatekeeper appeal to reach the EU's top court. A General Court ruling in July 2024 dismissed ByteDance's initial challenge, finding that TikTok met all three criteria for designation: significant market impact, status as an important business gateway between firms and consumers, and an entrenched, durable position in that role.
ByteDance appealed in September 2024, and Tuesday's hearing put those findings back in play.
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TikTok's counsel argued the General Court erred on each of the three thresholds. The company has long contended that it is a challenger rather than an incumbent, that its business users have options elsewhere, and that its market position is neither dominant nor durable in the sense the DMA requires.
A successful appeal would not strike the DMA down, but it would knock TikTok out of the regime and complicate Brussels' attempt to apply the same rulebook uniformly across the six designated gatekeepers.
The Commission's lawyer, Mislav Mataija, dismissed the arguments. “Lock-in can occur even when some degree of multihoming exists,” he told the court. “For example, there may be specific user groups that depend on TikTok.”
The Commission's position is that the criteria are met, that the General Court applied them correctly, and that ByteDance is asking the Court of Justice to substitute its own reading of the facts for the lower court's, which is not what an appeal on a point of law is for.
TikTok was named a gatekeeper alongside Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft on 5 September 2023, joining the six platforms covered by the DMA. The label triggers a set of obligations, including interoperability requirements, restrictions on self-preferencing, and limits on combining user data across services.
Non-compliance carries fines of up to 10% of global turnover, doubling to 20% for repeat offences.
The stakes for the Commission are broader than TikTok itself. The DMA is the first attempt in any major jurisdiction to regulate large digital platforms ex ante rather than through case-by-case competition enforcement, and its credibility depends partly on the courts upholding the designations.
A reversal at the Court of Justice would not be fatal, but it would force the Commission to redo its analysis under tighter judicial scrutiny and would give the other gatekeepers grounds to test their own designations more aggressively.
The case has been heard by the Grand Chamber, which is reserved for cases of particular importance or institutional weight. The hearing was streamed with a delay on the court's website. A judgment is expected in the coming months; the court did not set a date.
ByteDance has continued to invest in Europe in parallel, including a €12bn commitment announced last year and tied to data-centre infrastructure under its Project Clover programme. That investment runs regardless of the appeal's outcome. The DMA obligations, on Tuesday's evidence, may run alongside it.