The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, said this Wednesday (28) that the dispute with the United States over Greenland should represent an “awakening” for Europe and challenged the intentions of American President Donald Trump to annex the autonomous Danish territory.
The French president made the comments during a meeting with Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, and Greenlandic Prime Minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, in Paris.
Macron stated that the “awakening” he referenced would be for Europe to focus “on reaffirming our European sovereignty, on our contribution to the security of the Arctic, on the fight against foreign interference and disinformation and on the fight against global warming”.
According to information from agencies France-Presse (AFP) and Reuters, the French president also reaffirmed Paris’s “commitment” to “the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Denmark and Greenland.
“Greenland is not for sale, nor available to be taken by others. Greenlanders will decide their own future”, he said.
Frederiksen stated at the meeting that “the world order as we know it is under pressure, it is changing rapidly”. “Maybe it has come to an end,” said the Danish prime minister.
Macron’s combative stance seems to clash with that of NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, who on Monday (26), in a session with MEPs in Brussels, said that Europe is not ready to defend itself against external aggression – Trump has claimed that the US needs Greenland to defend against the presence of Russia and China in the Arctic.
“If anyone still thinks that the European Union, or Europe as a whole, can defend itself without the US, keep dreaming. It can’t,” Rutte said at the time.
Last week, Trump announced that Washington and NATO had agreed on the “framework” of an agreement regarding Greenland, but without detailing what that commitment would look like.
In the same announcement, the American president said that tariffs that would be imposed from February on imports from eight European countries that oppose the American annexation of Greenland, including Denmark, have been suspended. The European Union has also suspended for now plans for a “trade bazooka” in response to Washington.
