Hundreds of protesters broke into the construction site of a new Microsoft data centre in Amsterdam on Friday, 6 November, climbing a crane and setting off flares as police moved in, in the most dramatic action yet in a growing European backlash against the huge computing facilities being built to power artificial intelligence.
The activists gathered at the site in the Sloterdijk district of the Dutch capital, marching arm in arm before breaking in. Some climbed a crane, others set off flares and clashed with police, and police said two groups cut open a gate to get onto the site. Dutch police said they detained between 150 and 200 people suspected of trespassing during the protest.
By late afternoon, officers were escorting activists off the construction site, although some remained, local media reported. Pro-Palestinian activists also joined the demonstration in the Dutch capital.
The action was organised by the protest group Geef Tegengas, which translates as Push Back. Nathan Timmer, of the group, told local broadcaster AT5 that the demonstrators were occupying the site in an effort to stop construction going ahead.
The facility is being developed by Pure Data Centres Group, with a planned capacity of 78 megawatts and Microsoft as its sole tenant. The site owner plans to invest more than $1 billion in the project and is backed by Brookfield-owned Oaktree.
Amsterdam was the sharp end of two days of coordinated action on 6 and 7 November under the banner of the Stop Dirty Data Centres coalition, with protests and other actions planned in more than a dozen European countries. The coalition, which brings together environmental groups and digital rights campaigns, is demanding a moratorium on large-scale data centre developments. Other planned actions included a march in Dublin, a protest outside the parliament building in Warsaw, and a demonstration against a different Microsoft data centre in Denmark.
Campaigners say the energy-hungry buildings place heavy demands on power supplies and local communities, and they want a pause on new large-scale developments until their social and environmental costs are properly weighed. The Amsterdam protest was aimed squarely at that argument: a single facility built to run the intensive computing workloads behind AI, in a city where residents and activists say the benefits flow elsewhere.
Microsoft said it was aware of the Amsterdam demonstration, understood that people had strong feelings about the project and respected their right to express them peacefully, but did not condone any unlawful actions. Pure Data Centres said it was committed to engagement with local stakeholders and asked those on site to leave safely and engage in dialogue about the development and any concerns they had.
On the other side of the argument, the European Union's tech chief, Henna Virkkunen, told Reuters on Thursday that Europe needed more datacentres to power AI development, a reminder that governments across the continent see the computing capacity as essential infrastructure rather than a luxury.
The protest came in the same week that doubts about the AI build-out shook financial markets. The Nasdaq fell 5.52 percent on Thursday, its worst day since April 2025, as investors reassessed the cost of the data-centre boom and the returns it will deliver, wiping about $2 trillion off the index's market value in a single session.
The coordinated actions continue on Saturday, 7 November, with further protests planned across Europe. What happens next will depend on whether the detentions in Amsterdam lead to charges, whether Pure Data Centres and the city's authorities change course on the project, and whether the campaign's call for a moratorium gains political traction. For now the occupation is over, but the coalition behind it has signalled that Friday was only the start.
