Beyond FLAP-D: what the UK can learn from Europe’s next-wave data centre markets

Guest blog by Duncan White, Senior Director, Communications and Marketing at AtlasEdge #techUKSmarterState

Duncan White

Chief of Staff & Communications Director, AtlasEdge Data Centres

Company location: London, UK

Global headcount and turnover: 178 employees, £20m

About the company: AtlasEdge is a tech start-up, established in 2021 by Liberty Global and DigitalBridge. Our ambition is to become the leading European Edge data centre platform. We have operations across 12 countries and are growing fast.

Current responsibilities: As a founding member of the company, I lead all aspects of communications (internal and external), public affairs activity, and shaping our story to the market.

Current involvement with techUK: After helping establish AtlasEdge, I led our joining process of techUK. I regularly contribute to policy recommendations, as well as attending key events.

What are your reasons for wanting to be a techUK Director and what could you bring to the techUK Main Board?
I believe that there has never been a more exciting - or important - time for the tech industry. We are witnessing an incredible wave of innovation and techUK has a key role ensuring that the UK is in the best possible position to become a world-leader in this space. With my experience across politics, journalism and communications, I would relish the opportunity to help shape the techUK story, delivering a compelling and coordinated vision.

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The European data centre industry has long been driven by five great growth engines: Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin (FLAP-D). Each city offers unparalleled connectivity to the continent, deep pools of capital, strong demand and dense digital ecosystems that make them the natural centres of gravity for growth.

But the extraordinary success of these markets has also made them harder to grow in. Vacancy rates across FLAP-D are forecast to fall to an all-time low of 6.5% by the end of 2026, while power constraints, higher costs, labour shortages and increasingly complex regulations continue to limit new capacity at scale.

As a result, attention is shifting beyond these traditional hubs to a new wave of European markets – cities such as Hamburg, Vienna, Madrid and Lisbon. These locations offer greater access to power and land, more supportive local authorities, and genuine room to scale over time. History shows us that growth does not disappear when markets tighten; it moves to where it can continue. All the while, pressure on capacity continues to grow – with industry forecasts suggesting European data centre demand will almost double by 2030, driven primarily by cloud and AI workloads. This is a shift we are seeing first-hand. At AtlasEdge, our investment is increasingly focused on these next-wave markets, where we can deliver the scale, performance and long-term capacity our customers require.

But this shift is not only about capacity. It's also about sovereignty.

Customers, particularly those in highly regulated industries, want greater control over where their data sits and how it is governed. Non-European legal frameworks, such as the US CLOUD Act, can create uncertainty around access to data, regardless of where the infrastructure is physically located. In response, organisations are seeking a broader, more distributed footprint beyond a handful of core hubs, bringing infrastructure closer to users, improving compliance options, reducing latency and strengthening resilience.

These next-wave markets are also increasingly becoming the natural home for sovereign cloud. Platforms such as T‑Systems’ Open Telekom Cloud, operated under German law and expanding into cities like Stuttgart, show scalable, compliant infrastructure can support public services and regulated industries alike. Sovereign cloud requires significant, future‑proof capacity – something next wave markets are uniquely positioned to provide.

So where does that leave the UK?

As digital infrastructure, sovereign cloud and AI‑ready data centres increasingly scale more quickly elsewhere, the UK risks losing momentum, falling behind – and becoming over‑reliant on infrastructure beyond its own governance frameworks.

This risk is not hypothetical. Industry estimates suggest Europe will see over €100 billion of data centre investment by 2030, and – as techUK has highlighted – the UK’s long grid connection timelines are already pushing AI and cloud investment toward faster-moving European markets.

Ultimately, a ‘smarter state’ will not be delivered by assuming that core digital infrastructure will always be available elsewhere. Instead, the UK must work closely with the data centre sector, delivering clear long-term policy signals that will enable providers to invest, plan, build and deploy for the decade ahead.

Ultimately, the UK must decide whether it wants to shape its own digital foundations or become dependent on capacity and governance elsewhere. By acting now – and matching the ambitions being shown in the next-wave markets reshaping Europe’s data centre landscape – the UK can secure the resilience, sovereignty and scalable capacity that an increasingly uncertain world demands.

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