PULSE - Europe beyond the beat

PULSE is an initiative for cross-border collaborative journalism in Europe

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Political support versus local resistance: A review of data centers within the European Union

Sunday, Jul 19, 2026

Der Standard

EU hyperscaler expansion faces local resistance and regulatory gaps amid AI boom, despite government support.

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[This is an automatically generated summary, for reference only]

The ongoing AI boom is driving the construction of data centers across Europe, with the European Commission planning a €20 billion tender for AI “gigafactories.” While some governments are supportive, they face increasing local opposition to these energy-intensive and environmentally impactful facilities, alongside a lack of regulations. France is actively positioning itself as an AI data center hub in Marseille, while this report provides updates from various European countries, including Google’s new facility in Kronstorf, Austria.

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PULSE – Europe beyond the beat is an initiative coordinated by OBCT which has been promoting intense journalistic cross-border collaborations in Europe since 2024. The main aim is to help strengthen the European public sphere by reporting and telling stories from new and diverse perspectives.

At the heart of PULSE are 10 leading national news outlets (Delfi – Lithuania, Deník Referendum – Czechia, Der Standard – Austria, EfSyn – Greece, El Confidencial – Spain, Gazeta Wyborcza – Poland, HotNews – Romania, HVG – Hungary, Il Sole 24 Ore – Italy, Mediapool – Bulgaria) and three transnational organisations, including OBCT , n-ost and Voxeurop .

PULSE’s offering also includes the distribution of free content to third-party outlets and the animation of four thematic networks open to any European journalist interested in crucial issues such as EU enlargement, Europe and other global powers, the green transition, or media and information society.

PULSE is driven by a sort of virtual transnational newsroom made up of journalists from all the publications involved, which produces new journalistic content on European issues in a collaborative way on a daily basis, coming in many languages. A further layer of associated partners and journalists enriches PULSE’s editorial output, which amounts to over a thousand publications per year.