European leaders have dramatically rallied together in support of Denmark and Greenland after one of Donald Trump’s leading aides suggested the US may be willing to seize control of the Arctic territory by force.
Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, and Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, declared that Greenland – a semi-autonomous territory of the kingdom of Denmark – “belongs to its people”, in a rare European rebuke to the White House.
“It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland,” the three leaders said in a statement on Tuesday, made jointly with the prime ministers of Denmark, Italy, Poland and Spain.
Later in the evening, Starmer repeated British support for Denmark at a press conference in Paris where Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were present. “I’ve been very clear as to what my position, the position of the UK government, is,” the British leader said.
But, anxious to avoid deepening the transatlantic rift, Starmer, Macron and Merz chose to focus on making fresh security commitments to Ukraine, at an event aimed at bolstering support for Kyiv planned before the Greenland crisis broke.
The European declaration emerged in response to renewed US demands to seize control of the self-governing territory in the aftermath of the capture of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro by the US military.
On Monday night, when asked to rule out using force, the US president’s influential deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, said “nobody [was] going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland”.
In an interview with CNN, Miller said military intervention would not be needed in order to gain control over Greenland because of its small population.
A day earlier, Trump had said that the US needed Greenland “very badly”, renewing fears of a US invasion of the largely autonomous island in an effort to take control of its oil, gas and rare earths as the polar ice cap melts.
It prompted alarm in Denmark, and a warning from Mette Frederiksen, the country’s prime minister, that an attack on Greenland would risk the collapse of the Nato military alliance. It would, she said, be the end of “everything”.
That was followed by an intense diplomatic effort, which led to the joint European leaders’ statement in support of Copenhagen, released before the international summit in Paris discussing security guarantees for Ukraine.
The European leaders emphasised that security in the Arctic had to be achieved collectively with Nato allies, rather than by the US seizing control of another Nato member’s territory.
“Nato has made clear that the Arctic region is a priority and European allies are stepping up,” the statement said. “We and many other allies have increased our presence, activities and investments, to keep the Arctic safe and to deter adversaries.”
Denmark and Greenland asked to meet the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, urgently to “discuss the significant statement made by the United States about Greenland”, Greenland’s foreign minister, Vivian Motzfeldt, wrote on social media.
Lord Ricketts, a former UK national security adviser, warned that if the US were to annex Greenland it would be disastrous for Nato, amounting to, “for all practical purposes, the end of an alliance which is based essentially on trust”.
Security relationships such as the coalition of the willing in support of Ukraine, led by the UK and France and supported by Germany, would “take on a much greater significance alongside bilateral defence links with the US”.
On Tuesday night, the White House said Trump and his team were discussing options for acquiring Greenland and that using the US military for this was “always an option”.
“President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region.
“The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the US military is always an option at the commander-in-chief’s disposal,” the White House said in a statement in response to queries from Reuters.
Earlier, Miller had suggested that Denmark does not have a right to the Arctic territory, which is a former Danish colony. Copenhagen continues to control Greenland’s foreign and security policy.
Asked whether military action against Greenland was off the table, he incorrectly stated that its population was 30,000 when in fact it is 57,000, saying: “What do you mean, military action against Greenland? Greenland has a population of 30,000 people.
“The real question is what right does Denmark have to assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim? What is their basis of having Greenland as a colony of Denmark?”
There was, he said, “no need to even think or talk about” a military operation in Greenland, adding: “Nobody is going to fight the US militarily over the future of Greenland. That doesn’t make any sense.”
Miller’s interview was conducted after his wife, the rightwing podcaster Katie Miller, posted a map on X of Greenland draped in a US flag with the caption “SOON”.
But late on Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported US secretary of state Marco Rubio as downplaying the possibility of military action, saying Trump still intended to buy Greenland.
Naaja H Nathanielsen, the Greenlandic minister for business, mineral resources, energy, justice and gender equality, told the Guardian: “The people of Greenland take this potential threat very hard and are anxious and afraid.”
Greenland long been a “good American ally”, Nathanielsen said, but this “does not transfer into an acceptance of – or interest in – becoming Americans”.
She added: “We are very few, but we are a people in our own right and insist that we are the ones to decide the future of Greenland.”
Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, also made a strong statement in which he urged Trump to give up his “fantasies about annexation” and accused the US of “completely and utterly unacceptable” rhetoric. “Enough is enough,” he said.
Inuit people are understood to have lived in Greenland since as early as 2500 BCE. Modern colonisation began in 1721, when Hans Egede arrived, acting with the support of what was then Denmark-Norway. It remained a colony until 1953, when it became part of the kingdom of Denmark.
During the second world war, when Denmark was occupied by Germany, Greenland was occupied by the US and returned to Denmark in 1945. The US has had a military base in Greenland, which is important for its ballistic missile early warning system, at Pituffik (previously Thule) since the cold war.
In recent years there has been growing support for Greenlandic independence, particularly after revelations about Denmark’s treatment of Greenlandic people – including the IUD scandal – during and since colonial rule.
But amid the spectre of Trump’s threat, Greenland in March formed a new four-party coalition government in a show of national unity, with the first page of the coalition agreement stating: “Greenland belongs to us.”
