About 100 protesters overran a Microsoft data center under construction in Amsterdam, some carrying placards reading "Screw your data center."
According to Reuters, the "Stop Dirty Data Centers" coalition is planning actions in 16 countries on November 6 and 7, including Amsterdam, Dublin, Warsaw and a second Microsoft site in Denmark. A map on the group's website shows 85 locations across Europe. Its demand is "an immediate moratorium on large data centres in Europe."
Pure Data Centers, which owns the Amsterdam site, asked those on site to "leave safely" and talk with the company. Microsoft said it understood the strength of feeling and respected the right to peaceful expression, but did not condone unlawful action.
The coalition's list of grievances is long: energy bills, housing shortages, water, heatwaves, surveillance, militarization and big tech's influence on democracy. It says it does not want existing projects closed. It wants new AI data center construction held until governments set clearer rules.
That ask lands in a Europe where officials are already acting in pieces. Denmark has paused grid connection requests, with applications totaling more than 60GW (gigawatts, a measure of power capacity), over eight times the country's current peak consumption. An Italian council has set a 200% tax on data center development on agricultural land to steer builders toward old industrial sites. In Finland, a criminal probe targets Google after its subsidiary, Tuike Finland Oy, allegedly cleared 816 acres of forest without a permit.
Those measures target land, power and permits, the narrower grievances on the coalition's list. A continent-wide pause is a different order of request, and the coalition's wider agenda makes it harder to satisfy than any single rule. In the U.S., data center opposition has become a midterm election issue.
EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen told Reuters that Europe needs its own AI capacity, but that citizens must be able to trust that bills will not skyrocket and blackouts will not follow. Her position and the protesters' differ mainly on timing: build while writing the rules, or write the rules first.