This combination of pictures created on January 06, 2026 shows Greenland’s Head of Government Jens-Frederik Nielsen and U.S. President Donald Trump. Greenland’s prime minister on January 5, 2026 called for renewed talks with the U.S. “The situation is not such that the United States can conquer Greenland. That is not the case. Therefore, we must not panic. We must restore the good cooperation we once had,” Jens-Frederik Nielsen said, adding “we must try to re-establish contact”.
FREDERICK FLORIN / AFP
Leaders are happy to release statements but want the issue of Greenland’s control to be decided by others.
The leaders of some of Europe’s biggest powers—though, notably, not the European Union itself—came together on Tuesday to issue a statement stressing that “Greenland belongs to its people” and “it is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.”
This was in response to Donald Trump’s renewed declaration that the U.S. “needs” the vast Arctic island for security. The president has pursued this line over recent months, during which time European leaders have done little other than put their names to similar such statements.
Brussels’ exclusion from this latest document has prompted many to mock the growing insignificance of the bloc. Italian League Senator Claudio Borghi said this shows “that the EU no longer exists” and that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen “has been put back in the broom closet.”
Not that the statement—agreed on by the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the UK, Denmark, and Greenland—has been taken to mean much even without von der Leyen’s signature.
For starters, Spain’s El Debate newspaper argues that the signature of only seven European leaders “highlights the division within the European Union.” And American commentator Nick Solheim, suggesting that it was largely issued in response to the wife of one of Trump’s senior aides saying Greenland would be taken by the U.S. “soon,” jibed that the statement’s European signatories “are not acting like serious, rational powers.”
Sweden’s Expressen newspaper also argued in an editorial on Tuesday that “supporting Denmark cannot just be done through small bursts of appropriately angry statements.”
Indeed, Washington has so far appeared totally unperturbed by these messages. And Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, has also this week confidently claimed that “nobody is going to fight the U.S. militarily over the future of Greenland. That doesn’t make any sense.”
Reports also note that while European leaders are happy to say they are unhappy with Trump’s manoeuvring, they are likely to leave resolving the dispute to NATO, saying that since Greenland is part of the Danish realm, it falls under the security alliance’s collective defence. The line here is that changes to its security position would therefore fall to NATO. This is also the Hungarian government’s view of the situation.
This latest joint letter was published on the same day that U.S. envoys joined a ‘coalition of the willing’ meeting for the first time, in Paris, to discuss Ukraine ceasefire monitoring. To no one’s surprise, Trump’s team said it will lead this effort if a peace deal is agreed in Ukraine and that it would “support” a European-led multinational force in Ukraine “in case of” a new attack by Russia.
Michael Curzon is a news writer for europeanconservative.com based in England’s Midlands. He is also Editor of Bournbrook Magazine, which he founded in 2019, and previously wrote for London’s Express Online. His Twitter handle is @MichaelCurzon_.
