The General Court of the European Union in Luxembourg is hearing TikTok's challenge to its designation as a "gatekeeper" under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

The European Commission designated TikTok, owned by China's ByteDance, as a gatekeeper in September 2023. The company appealed that decision, and the case has now reached the EU's second-highest court, where judges will determine whether the platform must continue to comply with the strictest tier of EU digital regulation.

Why the designation matters

The DMA targets online platforms with significant market power. Gatekeepers — companies that control core platform services with at least 45 million monthly active EU end users and a €75 billion market capitalisation, or that hold a entrenched and durable position — must obey obligations designed to open up their ecosystems to competitors.

For TikTok, that means requirements including data-sharing with rivals, prohibitions on combining personal data across services, and restrictions on self-preferencing. TikTok argues it does not meet the gatekeeper criteria and that the obligations distort competition rather than protect it.

The legal arguments

TikTok's position rests on challenging the Commission's assessment of its market position. The company contends it is a smaller player competing against much larger rivals and that its users do not face the same lock-in effects as users of the biggest platforms.

The Commission maintains that TikTok's scale — hundreds of millions of EU users — and its commercial reach satisfy the DMA's quantitative and qualitative thresholds.

Practical consequences for practitioners

For competition and technology counsel, the ruling will be a leading indicator of how willingly EU courts will second-guess the Commission's gatekeeper designations. A TikTok win could embolden appeals from other designated gatekeepers — Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and ByteDance itself — and force the Commission to justify future designations with more granular economic evidence. A Commission win would consolidate the DMA enforcement framework and confirm that quantitative user thresholds carry decisive weight. Companies approaching the DMA thresholds should monitor the judgment closely, as it will shape how the Commission applies the designation criteria to new services and how existing designations can be contested on appeal.

Whatever the outcome, the judgment will land in a regulatory environment already charged. The Commission has opened non-compliance proceedings against several gatekeepers under the DMA, and the court's reasoning on designation criteria will feed directly into those enforcement battles.

A date for the judgment has not been announced. Appeals on points of law from the General Court's ruling can proceed to the Court of Justice of the European Union, meaning the final legal position on TikTok's status could take years to settle.

Companies advising platform businesses in the EU should treat the case as a bellwether for the durability of DMA obligations and the evidentiary standard the Commission must meet when wielding its most powerful digital-regulation tool.