A crisis between Facebook and Britain after a government demand to sell Giphy

Facebook has criticized the UK’s antitrust watchdog for calling on the tech giant to sell an entire Giphy company to address competition concerns.

Facebook, in response to the Competition and Markets Authority’s concerns, said on Wednesday that selling the company it bought last year for $400 million would be “unreasonable and grossly disproportionate,” Bloomberg reported.

The case opens another front for the world’s largest tech companies to fight for, with the European Union and Germany already investigating Facebook’s use of personal data while the Competition and Markets Authority scrutinizes the company’s dating and e-commerce services. Facebook, which was rejected in June.

Facebook said regulators should carefully weigh “the intrusive step of ordering a sale of a company not doing business in the UK” and that there were also questions about whether a dismantling of global investments could be forced by the British authority.

The company has been facing the authority for more than a year over a deal it completed before obtaining approval from the UK. The company is at the center of the storm as global regulators crack down on takeovers by big tech companies of potential smaller competitors.