Investigation finds electrocutions, tuberculosis and unpaid wages on Europe's data centre sites

A pattern across several countries

A five-month investigation by Investigate Europe, carried out with The Guardian, Le Monde and Follow the Money and with partners in nine countries, examines labour conditions on data centre construction sites. The reporting covers Sweden, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands, while Follow the Money also documents cases in Germany, the United Kingdom and Finland. Europe now has more than 2,300 data centres, with hundreds more in planning or under construction, and tens of thousands of workers are building them, many of them migrants. The sites examined are those of Google and Microsoft and their subcontractors.

The electrocution in Belgium

The central case involves a 34-year-old Romanian electrical tester whose name the reporting changed to protect his anonymity. In March he was working at Google's Saint-Ghislain site in Belgium, where managers had told him the cables were de-energised during a series of tests. On the second test the lines were live, and a discharge of 400 volts hit him. He says he had not fetched his protective suit because others were waiting for the job, a round trip that would have taken about 15 minutes. Hospital records seen by the investigation show burns covering 12% of his body, including second-degree burns to the face and neck and third-degree burns to the right shoulder and fingers. Doctors kept him in an induced coma for five days, and he says he went completely blind.

Inquiries, responses and missing records

The Belgian labour inspectorate closed its investigation in late October without finding irregularities, and no fines or sanctions for the accident were known when the reporting was published. The man says inspectors never heard his account, and he has not received the accident report despite repeated requests to the Dutch agency that recruited him and to the Belgian inspectorate. Google and Microsoft say they require all suppliers to comply with local labour law and health and safety rules. Dornan Engineering, an Irish firm that supervised his subcontractor, said it was committed to safe working conditions.

Deaths, tuberculosis and unpaid hours

Beyond Belgium, the investigation identified two deaths linked to data centre construction in the United Kingdom between 2024 and 2025, one of them at an electrical substation intended for Microsoft. Serious accidents also occurred this year on sites in Italy, Sweden, Norway and Belgium. In another case, an infectious tuberculosis outbreak went unreported, and workers were housed in accommodation where 14 people shared one bathroom. Follow the Money found hundreds of employees working 50 to 60 hours a week without overtime pay or pay for unused holidays. Unions consulted by the media warned that migrant workers, often unaware of local labour law, risk deeper inequality.

Policy backdrop

The European Commission has directed member states to designate 'acceleration zones' so that data centres can be deployed faster. Microsoft has been expanding its Gävle site in Sweden since June 2024, a project worth 3 billion euros that covers about 130 hectares. The timeline below sets out the dated events in the reporting.