Macron visits Greenland in solidarity amid Trump designs on Arctic island

The French president says his US counterpart’s Greenland takeover threats are not thing allies do.

French President Emmanuel Macron has arrived successful Greenland with a “message of solidarity and friendship” from Europe and castigated United States President Donald Trump’s repeated threats that helium intends to instrumentality power of the strategical autonomous Danish territory arsenic not “something to beryllium done betwixt allies”.

Macron reiterated his condemnation connected Sunday astatine the Arctic island’s Nuuk airport, wherever helium was greeted by Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen.

“It’s important to amusement that Denmark and Europe are committed to this territory, which has precise precocious strategical stakes and whose territorial integrity indispensable beryllium respected,” Macron added.

“It means a batch to maine … to convey a connection of relationship and solidarity from France and the European Union to assistance this territory look the antithetic challenges: economical development, education, arsenic good arsenic the consequences of clime change,” helium continued.

‘Not for sale’

Since returning to the bureau successful January, Trump has repeatedly said the US needs Greenland, a strategically located territory astatine the crossroads of the Atlantic and the Arctic, for security reasons and has not ruled retired taking the territory by force.

However, Denmark has vehemently stressed that Greenland “is not for sale”.

Macron, who is the archetypal overseas caput of authorities to sojourn Greenland since Trump’s threats, said successful a code past week astatine the United Nations Ocean Conference that Greenland and the heavy seas were not “up for grabs”.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared to admit that the Pentagon had developed plans to instrumentality implicit Greenland and Panama by force, if necessary, past week.

The Wall Street Journal reported past period that respective high-ranking officials nether the manager of nationalist intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had been ordered to analyse Greenland’s independency question and US assets extraction successful the territory.

But successful Greenland, polls bespeak that the immense bulk of the country’s 57,000 inhabitants whitethorn privation to go autarkic from Denmark, but they bash not privation to articulation the US.

While Greenland is not portion of the EU, it is connected the bloc’s database of Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs).

During Macron’s six-hour sojourn earlier helium travels to Canada for a Group of Seven gathering that Trump is besides expected to attend, helium plans to sermon Arctic information and ways to see Greenland successful “European action” to lend to its improvement portion “respecting its sovereignty”, his bureau said.

Following talks with Frederiksen and Nielsen, Macron is besides acceptable to sojourn a glacier to witnesser the effects of planetary warming.