Belgium's independent Privacy Commission is taking Facebook to court for failing to comply with the country's privacy laws, according to the site flandersnews.be. The legal action follows the publication last month of a series of recommendations by the Belgian Privacy Commission, directed towards Facebook and its users. The recommendations were prompted by research on how Facebook tracks users, carried out by two universities on behalf of the Privacy Commission, as reported by Ars back in March. Among the recommendations (PDF), Facebook was required to "refrain from systematically placing long-life and unique identifier cookies with non-users of Facebook," and "refrain from collecting and using the data of Facebook users by means of cookies and social plug-ins" unless it obtains an "unambiguous and specific consent through an opt-in," since an opt-out approach was not deemed to give unambiguous consent. Facebook was also required to obtain unambiguous consent through opt-in for "any further collection and use of information obtained by means of cookies, particularly for advertising purposes." It appears that it is Facebook's failure to implement these requirements has led to the court action by the Belgian Privacy Commission. The Commission's president, Willem Debeuckelaere, is quoted by flandersnews.be as saying: "We want a judge to impose our recommendations. These recommendations are chiefly aimed at protecting internet users who are not Facebook members. They too can be traced if they log on to pages with a like button. They are not being asked for permission and that's a violation of Belgian privacy legislation." According to the Belgian Privacy Commission, Facebook has "always contested the findings of the ... research report, but it has not provided concrete facts repudiating them." This refusal to address the research findings may have further consequences. As Ars noted in March, Belgium's Privacy Commission has been investigating Facebook in collaboration with the equivalent government privacy bodies in Germany and the Netherlands; more recently, France and Spain joined the contact group. This raises the possibility that Facebook will face similar legal actions against it in some or even all of those EU countries.