Data centres are mostly not built to withstand hostile attack, and the Iranian drones that struck Amazon’s sites in the Gulf showed that threat is no longer hypothetical. Cybersecurity incidents are also rising, and they tend to target data centres’ power and cooling systems and their interface with the grid.
The EU Commission’s decision to appoint the chair of Siemens, Jim Hagemann Snabe, as AI envoy is rife with extraordinary conflicts of interest. Brussels is currently engaged in an unprecedented rollback of digital, social, and environmental rules, which often closely mirror industry lobbying demands. Now it seems that corporate interests don’t just have a seat at the table — they have an office in the Berlaymont.
“Citizens can make personal choices – I decided on the Fairphone, with a Murena operating system, which is de-Googled,” said Belgian AI expert.
Pope Leo has chosen to confront one of the most pressing issues of our time by placing lethal autonomous weapons and the militarisation of artificial intelligence at the centre of his thinking.
On 1 July this year, Ireland takes the rotating EU presidency and agenda powers on the crown jewels of EU tech laws: “That should make you worried,” says activist Johnny Ryan.
Most of Europe has seen antisemitism re-emerge dramatically and in explicit and violent forms. Yet alongside it, a more insidious trend is also taking hold: the growing normalisation of Holocaust distortion through fabricated imagery, misleading historical narratives and manipulated content.
From concerns over Israel to getting negotiations right with “our American friends,” data protection has been no walk in the park for veteran EU supervisor Wojciech Wiewiórowski.
EU lawmakers accuse the commission of breaching public access to information rules – by amending a law actually intended to bring transparency to the rapidly-expanding data centre sector.
call for data centre transparency after Investigate Europe revelations of Big Tech lobbying campaign
In the US, the backlash against AI data centres is bipartisan, organised and growing. But not in Europe, where government are bending over backwards to attract them, writes Albert Alemanno.
Two years after adopting its AI Act, the EU is already preparing to simplify it. Does this mean Europeans are scaling back their regulatory ambitions on AI?
European digital assets have a habit of not staying European. A ‘Buy European’ label is not a sovereignty guarantee unless it embraces licensing as a tool and helps to safeguard the supply chains the software depends on.
Water-resource conflicts already happening in Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands will only worsen now that the EU Commission plans to triple data centre capacity in Europe over the next five to seven years. Little thought has been given to the oligopolistic cloud market and how it will evolve if the EU triples its data centre capacity.
The EU restricts biometric surveillance at home – but its landmark AI Act does nothing to prevent European companies from exporting the same technology abroad.
MEPs on Tuesday called for greater transparency and payment for copyrighted works used in AI technology — and legal consequences for violations.
Like much recent EU migration legislation, the proposal was presented without a comprehensive fundamental rights impact assessment. Sixteen UN experts have already raised concerns about its compatibility with international law. Yet EU institutions are rushing the file through the legislative process.
TikTok removed 112 million pieces of content – mainly with automated systems – that violated the platform’s policies in the EU between July and December 2025, according to the platform’s latest Digital Services Act transparency report.
‘We are not yet seeing the waves of redundancies that are feared’, European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde said, but stressed Europe was benefitting for AI-productivity gains on a par with the US and China.
The European Data Protection Board, along with 60 other data protection authorities around the globe, have called for safeguards on AI content-generators, especially regarding non-consensual AI imagery.
The EU needs to regulate smartly if it wants to have a real impact. Because globally, the US and China — the two biggest AI players — are not regulating AI use.
