On Nov 6 and 7 2026, organizations and communities all over Europe are joining forces to counter the growing data centre expansion through local action – such as peaceful protest, meetings and speaker led events – under the banner of #StopDirtyDataCentres.
We are one of nearly 100 groups supporting the #StopDirtyDataCentres campaign. It’s a Europe-wide movement calling for moratoria on large-scale data centres at EU, national and local levels until their wide-ranging environmental, democratic and social impacts have been properly scrutinized. Through such a pause, Europe has the opportunity to democratically make better choices about what digital infrastructure is really needed, for whose benefit and at what environmental and social costs.
It’s not hard to see why this is becoming an issue that citizens across all political spectrums feel impacted by and want to speak up about.
The European Commission says expanding AI infrastructure is essential to Europe’s technological sovereignty. Yet the case is unclear why:
- ⁉️ Europe needs to triple data centre capacity,
- ⁉️ How existing infrastructure is being used,
- ⁉️ How rapid expansion can be reconciled with Europe’s climate, energy and democratic commitments.
Instead, the European Commission is aggressively dismantling environmental protections and democratic oversight to push their data centre construction target through. The United Kingdom’s government is following a similar path.
In our op-ed for Tech Policy Press, we argue that until these questions are answered, Europe should pause the construction of new large-scale data centers. A Europe-wide moratorium would create the space to assess whether this expansion is necessary, sustainable and in the public interest.
We’ve also produced a series of blog posts examining what the minimum data centre sustainability standards should be in Europe:
- What should the minimum sustainability standards for data centres be in Europe? Part 1
- What should sustainability standards for data centres be in Europe? Part 2
- What should sustainability standards for data centres be in Europe? Part 3
Find out where events are happening
The Stop Dirty Data Centres website has an interactive map of events in support of the campaign that looks like this:
Our own staff will be taking part in events in Bristol UK, Berlin Germany and Vienna Austria. Hope to see some of you there!
