MADRID, May 31 (Reuters) - Spain's data protection

watchdog AEPD has ordered the provisional suspension of two

planned Meta products set to be deployed in the

upcoming European election on its social media platforms

Instagram and Facebook, it said on Friday.

The tools, named "Election Day Information" (EDI) and "Voter

Information Unit" (VIU), would potentially violate the Spanish

data protection regulation (GDPR), AEPD said.

"Our election tools have been expressly designed to respect

users' privacy and comply with the GDPR. While we disagree with

the AEPD's assessment in this case, we have cooperated with

their request," a Meta spokesperson told Reuters.

According to the agency, Meta has said it intends that all

eligible Instagram and Facebook users in the European Union will

receive notifications from VIU and EDI reminding them to vote.

"The data processing envisaged by Meta would be contrary to

Spanish data protection regulation and would, at the very least,

breach the data protection principles of lawfulness, data

minimisation and limitation of the retention period," the AEPD

said in a statement.

It added that Meta was selecting eligible voters based on

the data contained in users' profiles about their city of

residence, as well as their IP addresses. But the only condition

to be allowed to vote in the European election is being an adult

national of any of the EU's member states.

The AEPD said this data treatment was "unnecessary,

disproportionate and excessive" because it left out EU citizens

living abroad and targeted citizens of non-EU countries who are

in Europe.

The agency added that collecting data on users' ages was not

justified, as there was no reliable mechanism to verify their

self-reported ages, and the treatment of interaction data was

"totally disproportionate in relation to the supposed purpose of

informing about the elections".

The watchdog said Meta had not justified the need for

storing the data after the election, which "reveals an

additional purpose for the processing operation".