Today sees the start of the plenary debate of the draft law on the simplification of economic life at the French National Assembly. A seemingly technical law, with obscure issues, it marks a new show of force in the service of industry, and to the detriment of human rights and the environment. Article 15 of the bill, in line with the promises made by Emmanuel Macron to investors at the AI summit last February, aims to accelerate the construction of huge data centers by allowing the government to impose them onto local authorities and the population. Against this power grab aimed at building these infrastructures for the benefit of the tech giants and at the cost of a monopolization of land, electricity and water resources, a broad segment of civil society organizations is calling for the deletion of this article and the establishment of a moratorium on the construction of large data centers.
Simplification, the Trojan horse of deregulation
The examination of the “simplification” bill begins today in the National Assembly, amid a certain indifference. However, the stakes are high. As France Nature Environnement points out in its recently published report, which takes stock of 20 years of “simplification” laws, the latter are in fact to be ” a Trojan horse of deregulation, an insidious and dishonest process that weakens the rule of law and environmental justice, jeopardizing the protection of ecosystems and the construction of a livable world”.
Article 15 of the bill, relating to data centers, fits perfectly into this dark history: it authorizes the government to grant a status derived from the 2023 law on green industry to fast-track the construction of large data centers, which have an extremely high environmental impact: label “major national interest project” (PINM). According to the government, this status could be granted to data centers with a surface area of between 30 and 50 hectares (the equivalent of up to 71 football fields)!
With this PINM status, the tech multinationals and the investment funds that support them with tens of billions of euros would be provided by the government to impose data centers on municipalities: the national government would then take over the powers of local authorities relating to urban planning and regional planning, by itself rewriting local urban plans in order to adapt them to a given data center project. Public consultation procedures would be further weakened. Finally, the government could grant exemptions from environmental regulations, particularly those relating to protected species. In other words, the state could bypass existing rules in the name of “simplification” and “innovation” so as to impose the construction of resource-intensive and polluting data centers on local communities.
Moratorium!
For several weeks, the collective Le Nuage was under our feet, which organized itself in Marseille to resist the Hiatus coalition (launched in February to ‘resist AI and its world’), are calling for two things: on the one hand, the repeal of Article 15, and on the other hand the adoption of a moratorium on the construction of large server warehouses. Several amendments, resulting from contacts established at the political level, were aimed specifically at relaying these demands. Amendments to delete Article 15 were thus tabled by the Socialist Party, the La France insoumise. This is our urgent and minimum demand: to defend it, contact your representatives to convince them to adopt these amendments, go to this page where you will find arguments in support of these positions.
But other amendments, based on , had been tabled with a view to a more ambitious objective: to introduce a moratorium on the construction of large data centers, until a citizens’ convention can lay the foundations for a debate on the appropriate framework for the development of digital infrastructures. Sadly, although these moratorium amendments has been tabled and examined in committee in March without any problem, this time for the debate in plenary session, the services of the National Assembly deemed them inadmissible because they contravened Article 40 of the Constitution. Apparently, such a moratorium or the organization of a citizens’ convention would contribute to “worsening a [fiscal] burden” or “reducing public resources.”
Reality check
This is all the more concerning that the principle of a moratorium — a way of laying the foundations for democratic control of data centers, and of countering the government’s desire to accelerate ever further in defiance of rights and democracy — is supported by a wide range of actors.
A broad front of civil society, including researchers, activists and political representatives, is thus calling, in a Op-Ed in Libération, for the introduction of such a moratorium. In Marseille, the public investigator in charge of investigating the SEGRO logistics warehouse and data center case has also just called, in his recommendations addressed to the regional authorities, to “take a break so as to bring the players around the table, imposing a moratorium”. Similarly in Ireland, where data centers today account for de facto moratorium until at least 2028. In short, this policy option is not only possible, but also realistic and necessary to begin putting digital technology back in its place, at a time when the rise of AI is leading to a speculative boom in the development of these infrastructures.
So let’s keep pushing! Visit our campaign page to urge MPs to vote to remove Article 15 of the “simplification” law, and to demand that the government introduce a moratorium on large-scale data centers! You can also support us in this fight by making a donation to La Quadrature!