The US administration's renewed push “to have” Greenland, the autonomous Danish territory whose global importance has recently shifted from remote island to linchpin of Arctic security and green‑tech supply chain, has prompted the EU to push back.
“We need Greenland for national security, not for its minerals,” US president Donald Trump said on Monday (22 December), after appointing Jeff Landry, the governor of the state of Louisiana, as special envoy to Greenland late on Sunday.
“If you look up and down the coast of Greenland, you can see Russian and Chinese ships all over the place,” Trump also said. “We have to have it...Greenland's a big deal”.
But both Denmark and Greenland rejected the idea, stressing that Greenland is not for sale and that its future remains in its own hands.
"You cannot annex another country. Not even with an argument about international security,” Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland's prime minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a joint statement.
Danish deputy prime minister Troels Lund Poulsen and the foreign minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen both said it was “completely unacceptable” that Trump had appointed Landry with the main task of making Greenland part of the US territory.
Greenland's Nielsen also sent a message of calm. "This [Landry's appointment] can be seen as significant. However, it will not change anything for us," he said.
Top EU officials and national EU leaders expressed solidarity with Denmark and the people of Greenland.
“Greenland is an autonomous territory in the kingdom of Denmark. Any changes to that status are for Greenlanders and Danes alone to decide,” EU chief diplomat Kaja Kallas warned on Monday.
Swedish foreign affairs minister Maria Stenergard referred to international law and the obligation to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states.
These principles are “essential” to global peace and stability, said Lithuanian counterpart Kęstutis Budrys, adding that his country is ready to work with allies “to strengthen the Arctic security”.
Greenland, the largest island in the world, is about four-fifths covered by ice and has a population of just under 57,000 people.
Earlier this year, in March, US Vice President JD Vance stated: “We do not think that military force is ever going to be necessary, we think this [Greenland freely joining the US] makes sense.”
In August, Denmark accused US agents of trying to foment separatism in Greenland.
During his first term, Trump already floated the idea of purchasing Greenland, strategically located between North America and Europe.
But the US has had a long-standing security interest in Greenland. In 1946, the US, under president Harry Truman, secretly offered Denmark to buy Greenland for €100m — a figure used again in 2019 when Trump floated the idea to purchase the island.
And the US has had a presence on the Arctic island since World War II.
The island’s Pituffik Space Base, initially constructed for strategic air defence and bomber operations against the Soviet Union, is now considered one of the most important US military installations.
“It is quite literally the outermost eye of American defence,” Peter Ernstved Rasmussen, a Danish defence analyst, told the New York Times earlier this year. “Pituffik is where the US can detect a launch, calculate the trajectory and activate its missile defence systems. It’s irreplaceable.”
The geopolitics of the Arctic and renewed tensions between the US, China and Russia have made Greenland’s strategic importance undeniable, mainly due to its natural resources (such as oil and rare earth minerals), melting ice opening new sea routes and the militarisation of the region.
Russia has also treated the Arctic as a core security and economic priority in recent years, even amid the war in Ukraine.
Analysts described Russia’s power project in the Arctic as a mix of conventional build‑up at the borders with Finland and Norway, low‑intensity warfare operations, and nuclear deterrence, leveraging its bastions for nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines and dual-use infrastructure.
Meanwhile, China has pursued investments and a presence in Greenland since at least 2015, including bids for airports, mining, infrastructure projects, and proposed research and satellite facilities.
The first Trump administration strongly opposed these moves over security concerns, pressuring Denmark and Greenland to block them — a stance that continues to this day.
Recent incidents with submarine cables and pipelines in the Baltic Sea attributed to Russia’s shadow fleet and Chinese vessels have also served as a wake-up call for Europe.
Launched in 2021, an EU joint communication points out the Arctic's strategic importance for raw materials, security, and climate.
“In recent years, we have experienced significant turbulence in world politics. This is having a clear effect on the Arctic region,” said Estonian liberal MEP Urmas Paet in November, when the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on transatlantic cooperation to contain Russian and Chinese influence.
“The EU needs a smart strategy to face the Arctic’s growing geopolitical importance,” he also said.
Trump’s remarks over Greenland, and recent US threats and attacks against Venezuela, come after both the anti-Europe rhetoric that poisoned the US's new national security, and amid the scandal related to the Jeffrey Epstein files, which includes several references to the US president.
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Elena is EUobserver's editor-in-chief. She is from Spain and has studied journalism and new media in Spanish and Belgian universities. Previously she worked on European affairs at VoteWatch Europe and the Spanish news agency EFE.
Elena is EUobserver's editor-in-chief. She is from Spain and has studied journalism and new media in Spanish and Belgian universities. Previously she worked on European affairs at VoteWatch Europe and the Spanish news agency EFE.