Riot police swept in and hauled away several protesters after a group broke through the perimeter fence at the Microsoft data centre construction site near Sloterdijk, Amsterdam’s western port district, on Friday. Reuters witnesses counted approximately 100 demonstrators inside the compound, though Geef Tegengas, the activist group leading the charge, claimed the number reached 500. Some scaled a construction crane while others pushed past barricades that police had erected after the city mayor banned the march earlier in the day.
The confrontation wasn’t a spontaneous flare-up. It was the climax of a two-day coordinated campaign against data centre expansion across Europe, scheduled for November 6 and 7. Organizers from Geef Tegengas accused Dutch police of disregarding their right to demonstrate, alleging that the initial halt to their march was an overreach that provoked the site breach. The tension on the ground was palpable; what started as a blocked march turned into a physical siege of the construction zone.
The project itself is the flashpoint. Microsoft will lease the entire facility, which consists of three 85-metre-tall buildings. Geef Tegengas argues the data centre will consume as much electricity as all households in Amsterdam combined. More critically, they claim the project’s power demands will delay the construction of 30,000 new homes. City officials have echoed these concerns, warning that grid constraints are already threatening plans for new housing and schools.
This isn’t the first time the site has faced direct action. In July, Extinction Rebellion activists hurled balloons filled with acid and paint over the fence. The current escalation highlights a growing friction between tech infrastructure expansion and local regulatory limits. Plans for this facility were first submitted in 2016, predating the Dutch capital’s ban on new data centres within city limits, a loophole critics say the provincial government exploited when approving the project in January.
With arrests already made, the legal battle is now the next front. Dutch prosecutors will review the incident, while Geef Tegengas prepares to challenge the mayoral ban in court. Microsoft has not yet issued a statement on the security breach, but the incident places renewed pressure on the provincial government to justify how this project bypasses Amsterdam’s strict environmental and zoning rules.