From Lignite to Supercomputers: The New Geography of Greek Digital Sovereignty

A new opinion piece published by Proto Thema, co-authored by Spyros-Nikitas Tsamichas, Managing Partner of Tsamichas Law Firm and Digital World Summit Greece Editor in Chief & Ioannis Antoniadis, Vice-Rector of the University of Western Macedonia, examines one of the most consequential questions facing Greece’s technological future: who will own, control, and access the computing power that will drive the coming decade.

Behind the public conversation about artificial intelligence sits a quieter but decisive issue. As the authors argue, the debate over AI ultimately rests on infrastructure on the supercomputers, data centres, and energy systems that determine whether a nation participates in the digital economy as a sovereign actor or as a dependent one.

The article focuses on Western Macedonia, a region historically defined by lignite. The phase-out of lignite, the authors contend, is shifting from an environmental obligation into a strategic opportunity. Where coal once anchored the regional economy, a new configuration is emerging: public high-performance computing (HPC), a European AI Factory, a private hyperscaler, and abundant green energy. Together, these elements form what the authors describe as a single “square” of digital sovereignty.

The central question the piece raises is whether Greece will treat these developments as one coherent national strategy rather than as separate, uncoordinated projects. The distinction matters. A fragmented approach risks leaving valuable assets underutilised and strategic advantages unrealised, while an integrated framework could position the country and Western Macedonia in particular as a meaningful node in Europe’s digital infrastructure.

The piece situates this discussion within the wider work of the Digital World Summit Greece, the country’s official national initiative for the democratic governance of emerging technologies, which seeks to shape policy proposals responsive to societal needs and to keep citizens informed of current developments.

The questions raised by this article: ownership, control, access and the governance of critical infrastructure, sit squarely within the practice of Tsamichas Law Firm. Operating across Greek, English, and Italian and spanning seventeen practice areas, the firm advises clients on the complex legal frameworks shaping energy transition, digital infrastructure, data governance, and cross-border investment. As large-scale projects such as data centres, HPC facilities, and renewable energy installations take shape in Greece, the firm is well positioned to guide investors, public bodies, and private enterprises through the regulatory, commercial, and contractual dimensions of digital sovereignty. The participation of its Managing Partner in this national conversation reflects the firm’s ongoing commitment to engaging with the legal and policy questions that will define Greece’s technological future.

Read the full article here: https://www.protothema.gr/greece/article/1835094/apo-ton-ligniti-stous-uperupologistes-i-nea-geografia-tis-ellinikis-psifiakis-kuriarhias/?shem=rimspwouoe&fbclid=IwY2xjawSc72BleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFlNlRSdUxURk9ZVmxGZHNuc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHv0qXEe2PeV1N1Wm4JvMHFEpSmmJ_rETAAs8jjmsypxbrQvfLaSNVVNzYGhD_aem_IoL4o96AGYUJXa4R58QMpw

The full article appears below in English translation.

From Lignite to Supercomputers: The New Geography of Greek Digital Sovereignty

By Ioannis Antoniadis, Vice-Rector for Administrative and Financial Affairs of the University of Western Macedonia, and Spyros-Nikitas Tsamichas, Editor-in-Chief of the Digital World Summit Greece.

Behind the public conversation about artificial intelligence lies a quieter but decisive question: who owns, who controls, and who gains access to the computing power that will fuel the next decade. Greece, through a small but rapidly growing archipelago of infrastructure, is beginning to shape its own answer.

Supercomputers are not simply faster computers. They are systems of thousands of interconnected processors operating in parallel, enabling the training of AI models, simulations of climate systems, drug discovery, the development of quantum algorithms, and cybersecurity at scales that traditional data centres cannot support. In this production chain, hardware ceases to be indifferent equipment: it is the spatial footprint of technological power.

The European Commission has begun to grasp this equation with a clarity that was absent in earlier cycles. The International Digital Strategy, presented in June 2025, establishes digital sovereignty as an explicit strategic objective, not as a defensive slogan but as a structural condition, so that Europe can shape its own digital choices in line with its own values. Translating that commitment into hardware runs through the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, which since 2020 has coordinated public and private investment and pooled resources so that the EU need not depend on American or Chinese supercomputing ecosystems. It was on this logic that the AI Factories were built: not merely supercomputers, but complete ecosystems around machines specifically optimised for AI, with data centres, services, and regular upgrades to the computing stack.

In January 2026, the Council went a step further. The amendment of the EuroHPC Regulation established two new pillars: AI gigafactories, large-scale facilities combining high-performance computing, energy-efficient data centres, and AI-driven automation, and quantum technologies, which are expected to enable problem-solving, materials design, drug discovery, and network optimisation in areas where classical supercomputers reach their limits. The EU, in other words, is not confining itself to reaching the current technological frontier; it is designing the next one.

Greek Infrastructure

Within this European framework, Greece has developed a network of infrastructure that is unusually dense for its size. The National Infrastructures for Research and Technology (GRNET) holds a decade of specialised expertise in HPC systems, having operated the ARIS supercomputer since 2015. Today it is building “Daedalus” at Lavrio, a systemic feat of more than 89 petaflops with a total budget of €58.9 million, 35% from the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and 65% from “Greece 2.0” / NextGenerationEU. It is EuroHPC’s tenth investment in a national supercomputer, with Hewlett Packard Enterprise as contractor and an international consortium that includes Cyprus, North Macedonia, and Montenegro. Lavrio thus emerges as a new HPC footprint for South-Eastern Europe.

Built upon this infrastructure is “Pharos,” one of the EU’s first seven AI Factories. With a budget of €30 million, co-financed 50/50 by EuroHPC and national resources and coordinated by GRNET, Pharos brings together a consortium that includes Demokritos, the National Technical University of Athens, the “Athena” Research Centre, CERTH, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, FORTH, the University of Piraeus, the Growthfund, and the General Secretariat for Strategic Planning. Its task is to convert Daedalus’s computing power into applications for health, the Greek language and culture, and sustainability, and to serve as Greece’s vehicle for compliance with the AI Act.

In parallel, the private sector is moving quickly. Microsoft is building its first data centre in Greece, at Spata. The PPC group has incorporated into its strategic investment plan the creation of a green energy and technology hub featuring a large data centre and an AI gigafactory, a natural extension of decarbonisation into a new industrial model. Public HPC, a European AI Factory, a private hyperscaler, and green regional infrastructure are not separate projects. They are the corners of a single square of digital sovereignty, one maturing in ways that would not have been easily foreseeable five years ago.

Why Western Macedonia

Western Macedonia’s involvement is not incidental. In October 2025, through a Joint Announcement by the Ministries of National Economy and Finance, of Digital Governance, and of Artificial Intelligence, together with the Region of Western Macedonia, the intention to create a new AI Supercomputer in the area with national resources was made official. This is a dual decision: energy-related and industrial. Western Macedonia possesses what most European regions lack: abandoned industrial land with high-voltage connections, specialised technical personnel from PPC, and a university that has already shifted its scientific weight toward energy systems and computing, reinforcing the goal of a just transition.

In this environment, the University of Western Macedonia does not merely act as an academic observer of the transition, but as an institutional accelerator of it. With research activity in energy systems, computing, artificial intelligence, technology management, and sustainable development, it can connect the new computing infrastructure to the real needs of the region, the public administration, and the productive economy.

The Green Data Centre and Supercomputer of the University of Western Macedonia, currently under construction in synergy with GRNET as co-beneficiary, functions as a testing ground for this transition. It is not only a technical facility, but a model regional laboratory for how computing power can be combined with cleaner energy, energy efficiency, research applications, and the development of digital skills. In a region that for decades underpinned the country’s energy security, the University can help ensure that the new phase rests not only on the installation of infrastructure, but on the creation of knowledge, human capital, and innovation around it.

In an era when “where” a data centre is built is determined by energy costs, water availability, and networking speed, the region begins with serious comparative advantages. The corresponding risk, of course, is real: if these advantages are not translated in time into mature investment decisions, the transition could become the belated hosting of infrastructure designed elsewhere. The siting of the new AI Supercomputer in Western Macedonia therefore acquires particular significance, especially when it is connected to the region’s University. The University can act as a bridge between national infrastructure, the research community, businesses, and the needs of local society, transforming the supercomputer from an isolated technical project into a development ecosystem.

The challenge, then, is not only to install infrastructure in Western Macedonia. It is to shape around it a living ecosystem of knowledge, education, research, entrepreneurship, and public policy. This is the particular contribution the University of Western Macedonia can make: to transform digital sovereignty from an abstract national strategy into a concrete regional development opportunity.

Open Questions

Behind the announcements and the funding, the questions that truly matter are those preoccupying Brussels, Paris, and Berlin alike. How is “real,” rather than nominal, digital sovereignty secured when the chips, the frameworks, and many of the foundation models remain American or Taiwanese? Oversight of the infrastructure does not guarantee oversight of the computing stack.

How are climate targets reconciled with the explosive energy demand of data centres, especially when the AI gigafactories the EU is planning will require orders of magnitude more power than today’s systems? And who, ultimately, gains meaningful access to the resources of an AI Factory: large companies with the technical and legal capacity to exploit state-supported compute, or the start-ups and research teams who are the explicit reason such programmes exist? The stakes are not theoretical: it is about not reproducing, on a European scale, the asymmetry of Silicon Valley, this time with public money.

The new quantum pillar moves in the same direction. Beyond the promise of new capabilities, it opens a parallel field of sovereignty in which Europe still has the chance not to fall behind from the outset, if it acts with the speed and coordinated funding it demonstrated in the AI Factories pillar.

Greece’s Position

The Greek case displays a rare internal coherence. At Lavrio, the hardware is being put in place. Within the structures of Pharos, applied use is being built. At Spata, private hyperscaling meets domestic demand. In Kozani and Western Macedonia, the country’s first genuinely new industrial cycle in decades may be born. Western Macedonia does not simply need to host the country’s new computing power. It needs to connect that power to knowledge, human resources, green energy, and productive reconstruction. This is the role the University of Western Macedonia can assume.

The question is whether these corners will remain separate, or whether Greece will handle them as a single strategic line. The difference determines whether the country negotiates digital sovereignty as a state that builds sovereign infrastructure, or merely as a state that hosts it.

This piece is published on the occasion of the event “Supercomputers and Digital Sovereignty,” organised by the University of Western Macedonia in collaboration with the Digital World Summit Greece. The event forms part of the third cycle of the DWSG initiative, which serves as the Greek hub of the UN’s Internet Governance Forum and feeds policy proposals to the European Commission and the Ministry of Digital Governance.