TikTok, the short-form video platform, today announced details of Project Clover, which aims to introduce new measures to improve data protection, and will open two European data centers in Ireland and Norway.

The social network, owned by China's ByteDance, has been banned from use on professional devices in both the United States and the European Union (EU) for security reasons.

Today, the platform announced more details about Project Clover, through which it "will introduce a series of new measures to improve current data protections", it said in a statement quoted by Lusa.

"Based on the data security approach implemented in the United States of America, TikTok will improve data access controls with the introduction of security portals that determine employee access to the data of British and European users of the platform, and data transfers from European users. Any access to data will not only comply with the relevant data protection laws, but will also have to pass through these security gates and additional checks first," TikTok adds.

In order to have independent supervision and verification, "TikTok has also announced the choice of a third European data security partner, which will supervise and audit data protection and controls, monitor data flows, provide independent verification and report incidents," he adds.

Tiktok, which "will also work with third parties to incorporate the latest advanced privacy-enhancing technologies into its approach", confirmed that in addition to the European data center in Dublin, announced for 2022, it will open a second in that capital and a third in the Hamar region of Norway.

"The latter will be run by 100% with renewable energy," TikTok points out.

The social network "has already started storing European user data in Ireland and will continue this work throughout 2023 and into 2024," and "once completed, the three data centers will be the standard storage locations for TikTok's European user data, with a total annual investment of 1.2 billion euros," the platform said.

"An in-house team has been dedicated to working on Project Clover since last year and the implementation of these innovative and industry-leading measures will continue throughout this year and into 2024," reads the statement.

Project Clover "reinforces our long-standing commitment to data security in Europe and will ensure industry-leading data protection and security for our 150 million-strong European community," said Theo Bertram, TikTok's vice president (VP) of public policy and government relations, quoted in the statement.

In an interview with Lusa on February 27, TikTok's head of southern Europe said that the European Commission's suspension of the social network on professional devices is "a political decision that goes far beyond" respect for European rules.

"In a way, we understand that the debate can be more political" in the United States, but "here in Europe we have very strong rules" at a European and national level "that we respect", said Giacomo Lev Manheimer, TikTok's 'head of government relations and public policy, southern Europe'.

"That's why we don't see [the suspension by the European Commission] as being within the framework of the rules, above all we see it as a political decision that goes far beyond the rules and respect for European rules," he said.

Giacomo Lev Manheimer said that TikTok does not know the "reason behind the decision" of the European Commission, a process he considers "strange", but he is "confident" that everything will be resolved.

"I would like to emphasize how surprised we were [by the decision], it was completely unexpected given that our CEO [executive chairman] was in Brussels just a few weeks ago [in January], meeting with all the relevant commissioners and nobody raised any concerns about cybersecurity or privacy risks," he said.