Faster approval procedures for data centres? A new proposal from the European Commission

Data centres form the backbone of the EU's digital infrastructure – they drive digitalisation, enable cloud services, streaming, e-commerce and artificial intelligence, and contribute significantly to digital sovereignty. With over 2,000 locations and an installed IT capacity of more than 2,700 MW, Germany is the European leader. At the same time, data centres in Germany are under increasing regulatory pressure: energy efficiency, the use of waste heat and the expansion of renewable energies are key issues that are enshrined in national and EU directives.

A new regulation proposal by the European Commission dated 10 December 2025 (COM(2025) 984 final) recognises data centres as a strategic sector in the EU. As is so often the case, lengthy approval procedures are seen as a core problem in the development of this strategic sector. The European Commission's proposal addresses this problem and develops an improved, accelerated and streamlined procedure for environmental impact assessments.

The European Commission's proposal

The proposed regulation applies to environmental impact assessments of projects listed in Directive 2011/92/EU on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment, for example industrial facilities for the generation of electricity. Data centres themselves are not directly mentioned, but the requirements apply to the emergency power generators of data centres.

For such projects, an environmental single point of contact is to be established to facilitate and coordinate all aspects of environmental assessments. Changes to existing projects should only be subject to an environmental impact assessment if they involve extensive work that poses similar or greater risks to the environment than the existing project. The central point of the proposal is to reduce the duration of environmental impact assessments. To this end, the European Commission has set short deadlines, for example 30 days for the approval authority to specify the scope and level of detail of the information that must be included in the environmental impact report. Public participation should not take longer than 30 to 90 days. The deadlines may be extended for complex projects.

The proposed regulation also contains changes with regard to species protection. If the implementation of a project leads to the killing or disturbance of protected species, this killing or disturbance shall not be considered intentional if appropriate and proportionate remedial measures are taken to prevent killing or disturbance. Compensatory measures shall be considered appropriate and proportionate if they avoid significant adverse effects on the population of the species concerned, despite the possible negative effects on individual specimens of these species.

Finally, the proposed regulation contains already known measures for the digitisation of authorisation procedures.

The situation in Germany

It remains to be seen whether and what impact the European Commission's proposal will have on data centre projects in Germany. Data centres themselves do not require an environmental impact assessment. However, data centres do require an emergency power supply. And it is precisely these emergency power generators that require an environmental impact assessment, depending on their emergency power capacity. A general preliminary assessment of the individual case is required for a thermal output of 50 MW or more, and the project is subject to an EIA for 200 MW or more. In any case, larger data centres quickly reach the 50 MW threshold.

The European Commission's proposal could therefore, if it successfully passes through the legislative process, become quite significant for the approval procedures for emergency power supplies for data centres. It remains to be seen whether this will actually significantly reduce the length and scope of approval procedures.

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