Dublin, Ireland (AFP)-TikTok was hit with a massive EU fine of 530 million euros ($600 million) Friday, accused of sending personal data of Europeans to China and failing to guarantee it was shielded from access by Chinese authorities.

The Chinese-owned social media giant, which is also in the crosshairs of the United States, acknowledged during a probe that it has hosted European data in China, contrary to a previous denial, according go Ireland’s data protection watchdog.

One of the largest fines ever imposed by the authority followed a probe into the lawfulness of data transfers by TikTok.

In 2023 Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined TikTok — which has 1.5 billion users worldwide — 345 million euros for breaches of European rules on processing child data.

As TikTok — a division of Chinese tech giant ByteDance — has its European headquarters in Ireland, the Irish authority is the lead regulator in Europe for the social platform, as well as others like Google, Meta and X.

“TikTok failed to verify, guarantee and demonstrate that the personal data of (European) users, remotely accessed by staff in China, was afforded a level of protection essentially equivalent to that guaranteed within the EU,” said DPC deputy commissioner Graham Doyle.

“TikTok did not address potential access by Chinese authorities to (Europeans’) personal data under Chinese anti-terrorism, counter-espionage and other laws identified by TikTok as materially diverging from EU standards,” Doyle said in a statement.

TikTok said it planned to appeal the EU fine, insisting it had “never received a request” from Chinese authorities for European users’ data.

“(TikTok) has never provided European user data to them,” Christine Grahn of TikTok Europe said. “We disagree with this decision and intend to appeal it in full.”

The social media giant has been in the crosshairs of Western government for years over fears personal data could be used by China for espionage or propaganda purposes.