EU AI Act transparency fight: Brussels sued over data centre silence

Brussels is being sued for staying quiet. On 30 September, Lighthouse Reports announced a complaint to the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee over the European Commission's refusal to disclose data centre energy and water figures.

The filing sets the EU's own right-to-know rules against the AI build-out it is trying to regulate, and it lands after a year in which reporters from more than a dozen newsrooms tried to obtain the indicators that data centre operators are legally required to report under the EU Energy Efficiency Directive, according to the complaint announced by Lighthouse Reports. The Commission holds the full dataset. It has so far declined to hand it over. The dispute is not about whether the numbers exist, but about who gets to see them.

Two things are happening at once in Brussels this week. Trump's White House announced a voluntary AI pact on 29 September, with the president describing it as "almost like a constitution" and promising "tremendous self-policing" from the companies involved, according to The Guardian's report on 30 September.

Meanwhile, EU institutions are being accused of the opposite: hiding the data that would let anyone verify what AI infrastructure does to Europe's grid and water supply. The timing is awkward. Washington is offering companies a voluntary framework, while Brussels is being taken to a compliance committee for not releasing the mandatory reporting it already collects. Neither side has published the underlying figures.