BRUSSELS, Belgium - France's data protection authority says Google's new privacy policy appears to violate the European Union's data protection rules.

Google announced its new privacy policy with much fanfare last month. It regulates how the Web giant uses the enormous amounts of personal data its collects through its search engine, email and other services.

The EU's data protection authorities are concerned about the privacy effects of the policy and asked French regulator CNIL to investigate them.

CNIL says its "preliminary analysis shows that Google's new policy does not meet the requirements of the European Directive on Data Protection."

The agency says in a letter posted on its website Tuesday that Google's explanation of how it will use the data was too vague and difficult to understand "even for trained privacy professionals."