EU court adviser backs TikTok’s gatekeeper designation

Advocate General Andrea Biondi recommended dismissing ByteDance’s appeal concerning TikTok’s designation as a gatekeeper under digital-market regulation. The EU court’s notice of 15 October concerns case C-627/24 P. The case matters to Hungarian advertisers and businesses because it affects the regulatory position of a platform used to reach customers.

The Advocate General’s opinion does not bind the Court of Justice. The judges will deliberate, with the final judgment to follow later; publication of the opinion is a separate procedural step. The new development described here is the recommendation, not an appeal already dismissed by the Court.

In this regulation, the gatekeeper concept refers to a platform’s role connecting business users and end users. Planning a Hungarian campaign still requires separate consideration of the available audience, advertising terms, data access and cost. No specific change in Hungarian advertising prices can be inferred from the opinion.

The new measurement of corporate technology use in the EU examines market adoption, while the EU panel examining AI incidents addresses another type of technological risk. The next substantive milestone in the TikTok case will be the Court’s judgment; until then, maintaining the distinction between opinion and judgment is essential to business assessment.