Activists have breached a construction site for a Microsoft data centre in Europe, as a coalition of campaign groups prepares a wave of protests against large-scale data centre building.
The 'Stop Dirty Data Centres' coalition says activist groups have announced actions in 16 countries on Friday and Saturday. The breach at the Microsoft site comes as those protests spread across the region.
The coalition is bringing together environmental organisations and digital rights campaigns. Their shared demand is a pause on the construction of large-scale data centres, a call that links concerns over environmental impact with wider questions about how digital infrastructure is built and who it serves.
The protests put a spotlight on the facilities that underpin cloud computing and artificial intelligence services. Technology companies are expanding this infrastructure, and the coalition's message is that the expansion should stop until its consequences are better addressed.
Details of the breach, including the exact location of the site and how many people took part, were not immediately available. Microsoft's response was also not immediately clear.
The scale of the planned actions, across 16 countries over two days, suggests an effort to turn scattered local objections into a coordinated European campaign. How far that pressure translates into delays or policy changes for data centre developers remains to be seen.
