France eyes Brexit tax breaks for data centres

Brexit is a world of opportunity for France, according to its government.‘Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire was peddling France as “Europe’s top destination for data centres”, highlighting an incentive that halves taxes on energy usage for such companies while also staying within the European legal regime on data.

The tax break, which was introduced this year, seeks to lower energy prices, which typically represent about a third of data centres’ operational costs, while giving companies a potential foothold in Europe, which could be necessary for UK-based firms after Brexit. And that’s in addition to low electricity prices that already undercut France’s two biggest competitors, Germany and the Netherlands.