Facebook is appealing the EU's request for access to documents to the court

The American company Facebook filed a complaint against the European Commission after a dispute over a request for access to the documents of the technology giant as part of investigations into data collection.

EU regulatory bodies are investigating whether Facebook misused its users' data, as well as how the company operates in its online marketplace.

Facebook is questioning the EC's right to access thousands of "irrelevant" documents containing "very personal information", the company confirmed, the Brussels portal EURACTIV reports.

A source familiar with the matter told EURACTIV.com that the Commission requested access to Facebook documents containing more than 2.500 specific search phrases, including very general keywords.

"With such criteria, hundreds of thousands of documents would be handed over. Many of them would reveal personal and completely irrelevant personal information," the source said.

Since the beginning of the investigation in 2019, Facebook has handed over more than 300.000 documents to the Commission, but the American company says that providing thousands more documents requested by the EC could compromise sensitive personal data that would not be useful for the investigation.

According to sources, many of the documents requested by the commission include employee medical records, child care information and data related to private investments and insurance.

Despite the broad and sensitive nature of the scope of the documents, EURACTIV says Facebook is prepared to provide EU regulators with the information they request, but only by giving them access to so-called "data rooms", which are secure virtual environments where sensitive or confidential data is kept. which cannot be copied or saved by third parties who have access to those "rooms".

However, according to two sources, the Commission rejected such a proposal and demanded that copies of the documents be handed over to the extremely broad nature of the Commission's request.

Facebook has therefore decided to file an appeal with the Commission's request to the General Court of the EU on July 15, claiming that the requests exceed the jurisdiction of the investigation and are not proportionate to the needs of the investigation.

"means that we would be required to hand over mostly irrelevant documents that have nothing to do with the Commission's investigations," said Tim Lamb, Facebook's competition advisor, on July 27.

"We believe that these requests should be considered by the EU courts," he stated.

A spokesperson for the EC announced that the body will "defend its case in court" and that an investigation into "potentially anti-competitive behavior by Facebook" is ongoing.