The Italian government has said EdgeConneX’s plans to invest €3bn ($3.48bn) in the country are of “national strategic interest.”

The EdgeConneX Campus Italia program was announced during a council of ministers chaired by Italy's President, Giorgia Meloni, on 14 May.

It involves the construction of three next-generation data center campuses with over 300MW of capacity in the Lombardy region by 2031.

The project will employ approximately 1,500 people every year during the construction phase and 300 directly once fully operational.

It also expects to attract an additional €5bn ($5.8bn) in indirect investments.

The project is being promoted by the data center operator's Italian subsidiary, EdgeConnex MCN Italy.

To make sure construction starts in the third quarter of 2026 and sticks to its 2031 completion timeline, it will have to be fast-tracked through the appointment of a special government commissioner agreed by the president of the region.

Once appointed, the special commissioner will be able to issue a single approval for the project.

Although Virginia-based EdgeConneX started focusing on regional and edge data centers across the US, the company has expanded into a global colocation and hyperscale provider with over 90 facilities worldwide.

EdgeConneX’s European footprint spans Ireland, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Poland, and Spain. In February, it announced plans for a gigawatt-scale data center campus in Sweden.

Major data center operators are rapidly expanding in Lombardy, including Echelon, Vantage, Digital Realty, and CyrusOne. The region is considered a strategic hub in Southern Europe due to its prime geographic position linking Europe to Africa and the Middle East, and its connectivity to trans-European fiber routes and submarine cable landings

Most of the major hyperscale players operate cloud regions out of Milan.

Learn more about the data center market in Italy and Southern Europe, and meet with other executives and experts from the region at the DCN Milan event next week