Europe’s GDPR cops dished out €1.2B in fines last year as data breaches piled up

According to the latest GDPR Fines and Data Breach Survey published by DLA Piper, GDPR fines pushed past the £1 billion (€1.2 billion) mark in 2025 as Europe’s regulators were deluged with more than 400 data breach notifications a day. The survey puts total fines issued across Europe last year at roughly £1 billion (€1.2 billion), up from £996 million in 2024, with €7.1 billion (£6.2 billion) in penalties handed down since GDPR came into force in May 2018.

Breach reporting has not followed the same plateau, with Europe’s data protection authorities receiving an average of 443 personal data breach notifications a day from 28 January 2025 to the present. The report notes that daily breach reports have now pushed past 400 for the first time since the regulation began, signalling a shift in enforcement intensity. Overall, the article frames this as the post-plateau era of GDPR enforcement arriving across Europe.