In brief
Large-scale protests erupted across Amsterdam, Warsaw, and Dublin as residents, environmental groups, and trade unions unite against data‑center development. Demonstrators demand transparency, local cost‑sharing, and stricter permitting, citing heavy electricity, water, and land consumption. Police arrests were made in Amsterdam and the future policy response remains uncertain.
Europe witnessed a surge of protests on Friday and Saturday at data‑center sites, sparking a debate over the continent’s ambitious artificial‑intelligence push and its strain on local resources.
In Amsterdam, thousands marched and a protest group entered a Microsoft data‑center construction site. Riot police cleared the site, and police arrested more than 200 demonstrators, all of whom were released by Saturday afternoon, Dutch broadcaster NOS reported.
Polish demonstrators gathered outside Warsaw’s parliament, chanting “People First, Data Second.” Residents from the nearby town of Piaseczno voiced their concerns, collecting signatures that call for a pause in the permitting of hyperscale data centers, the Xinhua report said.
In Dublin, hundreds rallied for the first national protest against data centers on Saturday. Community groups from several counties joined lawmakers from the opposition parties, the Irish Times described.
Data centers store and process servers that support cloud computing and AI, prompting critics to highlight their heavy consumption of electricity, cooling water and land. Ireland’s data‑center sector accounted for 23 percent of the country’s metered electricity use in 2025, up from 5 percent a decade earlier, statistics showed.
Jan Maksymak, a protester in Warsaw, said:
We call these data centres “factories,” but in reality, hardly anyone works inside them, while they consume enormous amounts of water and electricity… AI companies are taking advantage of government support and public resources to generate greater profits, while shifting the costs of their development onto society.
Milos Simic, an assistant professor at Serbia’s University of Novi Sad, warned that concentrated electricity demand could strain power grids and potentially pass costs to ordinary consumers.
Protesters, environmental groups and trade unions are demanding greater transparency, local cost‑sharing, and stricter permitting for new data‑center projects.
Whether governments will adopt tighter rules or broader cost‑sharing agreements is still unclear, as officials have not made formal statements in the wake of the protests.
