Germany and France warn Trump against use of force over Greenland

Germany and France have warned Donald Trump against any attempt to “move borders by force” after the incoming US president said he was prepared to use economic tariffs or military might to seize control of Danish-administered Greenland.

In a hastily called televised statement, Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said Trump’s remarks had triggered “incomprehension” among European leaders. “The principle of the inviolability of borders applies to every country – regardless of whether it is east of us or to the west – and every state must respect that, regardless of whether it is a small country or a very powerful state.”

Earlier, the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said that Europe would stand up in defence of international law. “There is no question of the EU letting other nations in the world, whoever they may be, attack its sovereign borders.”

Barrot added on France Inter radio, that, while he did not believe the US “would invade” Greenland, “we have entered an era that is seeing the return of the law of the strongest”.

Denmark has said it is open to dialogue with Trump about working together to address his legitimate security concerns when it comes to Greenland, while rejecting any threat of force or coercion.

Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the experienced Danish foreign minister, said it was in everyone’s interests to lower the temperature in the discussions.

“I have my own experiences with Donald Trump and I also know that you shouldn’t say everything you think out loud,” he said. He also played down the possibility that Greenland would ever become part of the US, adding: “We fully recognise that Greenland has its own ambitions. If they materialise, Greenland will become independent, though hardly with an ambition to become a federal state in the United States.”

Denmark is caught in a double bind, confronted by the increasingly serious threats from Trump to take over the island for US geostrategic reasons, but also growing demands from Greenland’s political class for full independence from Denmark.

Greenland’s prime minister, Múte B Egede, held talks with the Danish king in Copenhagen on Wednesday, a day after Trump’s remarks thrust the fate of the mineral-rich and strategically important island into the spotlight.

In his new year remarks Egede had said that Greenland was now ready to take the next big step in the effort to break the “shackles of colonialism”. A self-government act has already been passed that opens the way to a referendum on independence. Local elections are due to be held in April that could turn into a test of opinion on Greenland’s constitutional future.

The president-elect’s son Donald Trump Jr flew briefly to Greenland on Tuesday in a trip coinciding with his father’s call for the US to run the island, and returned trying to stoke a mood for it to be sold to Washington.

He said: “These are people who feel they’ve been exploited. They haven’t been treated fairly by Denmark. They’re being held back from exploiting their natural resources, whether it’s coal, uranium, rare earths, gold or diamonds. It’s really a great place.”

The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said on Tuesday that she could not imagine Trump’s ambitions leading to US military intervention in Greenland. In 2019 she had called Trump’s demand that Greenland be put up for sale “absurd”. Since then there has been a collective decision by the Danish government to try to soothe emotions.

Greenland was a Danish colony until 1953 but is now a self-governing territory of Denmark and in 2009 achieved the right to claim independence through a vote.

Danish politicians are hoping a confrontation can be avoided by a meeting between senior officials from Denmark and the US to discuss any update required to the many post-second world war security agreements signed by the two countries. The US has a military base in Greenland, Pituffik space base (formerly Thule base), first established in 1941. It provides critical early-warning systems necessary to monitor Russian activity. Other bases were abandoned in the 1970s. But with the melting of the ice around Greenland, the possibility of new trade routes opening has transformed the Arctic’s importance.

In Berlin, Scholz said that Russia’s “brutal war of aggression” against Ukraine had prompted Germany as the EU’s top economy to strongly increase defence spending to 2% of GDP, amounting to it more than doubling in the last seven years. He noted that his country had worked closely with the US to protect Ukraine’s national “sovereignty and integrity”. “Borders must not be moved by force,” he said.

In an hour-long press conference on Tuesday, Trump refused to rule out using military force to take the Panama canal and Greenland, and also suggested he intended to use “economic force” to make Canada part of the US.

Egede, a member of the pro-independence Community of the People (IA) party, said last week Greenland “is not for sale and will never be for sale”.

Arriving at Copenhagen airport late on Tuesday night, Egede responded to Trump’s refusal to rule out military or economic pressure in order to gain control of Greenland, saying they were “serious statements”.

His original meeting with the king, scheduled for earlier in the day, was cancelled at the last minute, with Egede’s office citing “diary gymnastics”. Donald Trump Jr’s visit to Greenland on Tuesday led to the cancellation being viewed by some as a snub and embarrassment to the king, who recently changed the royal coat of arms to more prominently include symbols of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, which are both autonomous territories of Denmark.

Aki-Matilda Høegh-Dam, the Greenlandic MP who represents the Siumut party in the Danish parliament, told the Guardian she took Trump’s comments about coercion as “directed more toward Panama than Greenland”. But, she said, his comments “underscore the growing geopolitical importance of Greenland”.

She added: “It also highlights a critical need for constructive dialogue. While I do not interpret his remarks as a threat of military force against Greenland or Denmark, they do suggest the United States may feel compelled to act if the kingdom of Denmark is unable to address security concerns effectively.”