Slovakia tries to sell itself as a data-centre hub
Slovakia wants to host large data centres in Bratislava and next to a planned pumped-storage plant at Málinec. Brussels is tightening the rules just as the government starts selling the country as an AI-power location.
The government says interest is rising because Slovakia has relatively stable electricity generation, surplus nuclear power and water that could be used for cooling. Prime Minister Robert Fico has argued that water reserves and plans for another nuclear unit make Slovakia a good site for “AI factories.” Agriculture Minister Richard Takáč said that from next year Slovakia should be a net exporter of electricity and that the country also has enough water to support such projects. Digitalisation Minister Samuel Migaľ has floated pairing a data centre with the Málinec–Látky pumped-storage scheme, using the reservoir both for water retention and for cooling.
The Málinec project itself is a long-horizon hydropower plan: linking the existing Málinec reservoir with a new upper reservoir near Látky, with staged capacity of 600–2,400 MW, commissioning targeted for 2030–2035 and an estimated cost of about €1.8 billion. That pairing is still political ambition, not a signed campus.
Critics say the energy and water math does not add up. Lucia Szabová of the Climate Coalition noted recent droughts and argued that Slovakia would be importing a technology other countries are already pushing back against because of power demand. Cybersecurity specialist Andrej Alexiev warned that a truly large facility of the kind global operators want could consume on the order of half of Slovakia’s electricity. Those claims are contested, but they point to the real constraint: grid capacity, cooling water and local acceptance, not slogans about surplus nuclear power.
A smaller first step has already been advertised. In February, President Peter Pellegrini said Bratislava would soon get a modern AI data centre of about 1 MW, using chips not previously deployed in Europe. That is a pilot scale compared with the multi-hundred-megawatt campuses now being built elsewhere.
Brussels is moving in the opposite direction from a pure “build anywhere” pitch. EU data centres used about 68 TWh of electricity in 2024. The Commission says that figure could nearly double to 114 TWh by 2030, more than 3 percent of EU electricity demand, mainly because of AI. On 21 September 2026 it proposed a common rating scheme for centres above 500 kW, covering energy use, water use, waste-heat reuse, clean-power contribution and grid flexibility. It also opened a consultation on minimum performance standards. First sustainability labels are expected in 2027. The EU still wants to triple data-centre capacity in five to seven years, but only if new sites can show they fit the power system rather than overload it.
Concerns are growing in Europe
The tension between capacity building and the real cost is also resonating in the European Parliament. Aura Salla (EPP), member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy and former Meta manager, speaks about the risk of digital colonialism.
“We have been building nuclear energy for decades and now we are handing it over to hyperscalers who are building data centres on a large scale on European territory. I don’t see any point in that. If you look at the news from Texas or other US states, they don’t want these data centres in their own backyard, that’s why they are coming to Europe,” she said in Strasbourg at a meeting with journalists on 15 September.
She also sharply criticized the current rules on the free flow of data from the EU to the US. According to her, Europe provides American companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Meta with cheap electricity and a suitable climate. However, these companies “collect European data for free, transfer it to the US, develop their AI services there, and sell it back to us at high prices,” she warned. She therefore suggests that the EU put a price tag on data and treat it as a precious raw material, more valuable than lithium, cobalt, or platinum.
Anna Cavazzini (Greens), chair of the Internal Market Committee, was also critical, saying Europe should seek a sustainable model, different from the American style of building increasingly massive centers that destroy the environment and energy resources.
It therefore proposes that the EU introduce mandatory rules for data center operators, who will have to conclude benefit-sharing agreements with local communities.
It is extremely difficult for small towns, villages or rural areas to say ‘no’ to investors when they come with the promise of investment and new jobs. But that is not enough.
“Locals must benefit financially from their presence and operators must make commitments to local infrastructure. And electricity is extremely important, if they use coal, we will only accelerate the climate crisis,” she warned.
That is the squeeze on Slovakia’s pitch. Nuclear baseload and a future reservoir may look like a competitive advantage on paper. Under the new EU rules, operators will also have to document water intensity, waste-heat reuse and grid flexibility. A Bratislava site and a Málinec pairing will be judged on those metrics, not only on political enthusiasm.
The article in Slovak by EUalive’s partner euBrief can be found here .
Caption: The construction site of a new data center on the grounds of a former East German lignite-fired power plant is seen in Lubbenau, Germany, 18 August 2026. The Schwarz Group is investing 11 billion euros in the project, called the ‘Schwarz Digits Datacenter.’ Schwarz Digits, the company’s IT division, is part of the Schwarz Group, which also owns the retail chains Lidl and Kaufland. The data center is expected to accommodate up to 100,000 GPUs, which can be used to train AI models. The Schwarz Group aims to retain control over its own data while also offering cloud services to third parties, ensuring that customer data remains in Germany. EPA/HANNIBAL HANSCHKE
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Katrine Lester@katrine.bsky.social · 16h ago
