German Chancellor Olaf Scholz delivers a press assertion on the Chancellery in Berlin on January 8, 2025. (Photograph by Odd ANDERSEN / AFP)
BERLIN, Germany — European leaders on Wednesday warned Donald Trump in opposition to threatening “sovereign borders” after the US President-elect refused to rule out navy motion to take Greenland.
Germany’s Olaf Scholz stated Trump’s feedback had sparked “notable incomprehension” amongst EU leaders the chancellor had spoken with.
Trump has designs on the mineral- and oil-rich Arctic island, an autonomous territory of European Union member Denmark that itself has eyes on independence.
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He set off new alarm bells on Tuesday at a information convention when he refused to rule out navy intervention over the Panama Canal and Greenland, each of which he has stated he desires the USA to manage.
“We want Greenland for nationwide safety functions,” he declared.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump speaks to members of the media throughout a press convention on the Mar-a-Lago Membership on January 07, 2025 in Palm Seashore, Florida.| Scott Olson/Getty Photos/AFP
Trump additionally labelled the US-Canada border an “artificially drawn line” and promised to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America”.
In Berlin, Scholz convened a press convention at quick discover and harassed that the “inviolability of borders is a elementary precept of worldwide regulation”.
In a later tweet in English, Scholz reiterated Berlin’s place that “borders should not be moved by pressure” and that Trump’s newest outburst had trigger “uneasiness” amongst European governments.
Referring not directly to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Scholz stated that the precept of sovereign borders “applies to each nation, whether or not within the East or the West”.
‘Wild hypothetical stuff’
Donald Trump Jr made a whistlestop go to to Greenland’s capital Nuuk on Tuesday, insisting he was solely making a day-long journey as a “vacationer” and he was not there to “purchase” the territory.
Denmark itself struck a extra emollient tone, at the same time as Trump threatened to slap excessive tariffs on Copenhagen if it refused to cede Greenland.
Overseas minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen stated the Danish Realm — which incorporates Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands — is “open to a dialogue with the Individuals on how we are able to cooperate, presumably much more intently than we already do, to make sure that American ambitions are fulfilled”.
French Minister for Europe and Overseas Affairs Jean-Noel Barrot delivers remarks after assembly with the US Secretary of State on the Quai d’Orsay in Paris, on January 8, 2025. | Photograph by Ludovic MARIN / POOL / AFP
French Overseas Minister Jean-Noel Barrot stated Greenland was “European territory” and there was “no query of the EU letting different nations on the planet, whoever they might be… assault its sovereign borders”.
In Brussels, the EU tried to keep away from being drawn right into a disagreement, one spokesman dismissing Trump’s territorial declare as “wild hypothetical stuff”.
Greenland has been autonomous since 1979 and has its personal flag, language and establishments. However justice, financial, defence and international affairs all stay underneath Danish management.
One other EU spokeswoman confirmed that Greenland was coated by a mutual defence clause binding EU members to help each other in case of assault.
“However we’re certainly talking of one thing extraordinarily theoretical on which we is not going to wish to elaborate,” EU Fee spokeswoman Paula Pinho instructed reporters.
Imperialism
Barrot dominated out the potential for a US invasion of Greenland however instructed France Inter radio: “We now have entered an period that’s seeing the return of the regulation of the strongest.
“Ought to we be intimidated? Ought to we be overcome with fear? Evidently, no.
“We have to get up and reinforce ourselves, militarily, in competitors, in a world the place the regulation of the strongest prevails.”
Barrot stated he believed the USA was “inherently not imperialistic” and stated he “didn’t consider” that that was altering.
Nevertheless French authorities spokeswoman Sophie Primas instructed reporters after a cupboard assembly that there was a “type of imperialism” in Trump’s feedback.
“Immediately we’re seeing the rise in blocs, we are able to see this as a type of imperialism, which materialises itself within the statements that we noticed from Mr Trump on the annexation of a whole territory.
“Greater than ever, we and our European companions should be aware, to get away from a type of naivety, to guard ourselves, to rearm,” she added.
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