France’s foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the EU would not allow any country to “attack its sovereign borders” after Donald Trump threatened Denmark and refused to rule out taking Greenland by force.
The French warning came as EU leaders registered their growing concern after Trump set out his designs on both Greenland and the Panama Canal at a press conference this week.
Greenland, the world’s largest island, is an autonomous Danish territory that is not itself part of the EU.
“There is obviously no question of the EU letting other nations in the world, whoever they are, and I would even say starting with Russia, attack its sovereign borders,” Barrot told the France Inter radio station after being asked about the prospect of a US attempt to take Greenland from Denmark by force.
“We are a strong continent, we need to strengthen ourselves further.”
Denmark retains control of Greenland’s foreign and security policy, despite the territory’s 1985 departure from the EU after a referendum.
The French foreign minister added he did not expect Trump to invade Greenland, but said that Europe needed to “wake up” to a more insecure world, echoing comments from French President Emmanuel Macron earlier this week.
During Tuesday’s press conference, Trump vowed to “tariff Denmark at a very high level” unless the country gave up control of Greenland.
He also suggested the US could annex Canada and called on Nato members to spend 5 per cent of their GDP on defence, more than double the current target.
Asked whether he would exclude the use of military or economic coercion to acquire Greenland or assume control of the Panama Canal, the president-elect said: “No, I can’t assure you on either of those two. But I can say this, we need them for economic security . . . We need Greenland for national security reasons”.
Trump previously said the US should take control of Greenland during his first term in 2019 — a suggestion Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen labelled at the time “absurd”.
Barrot said he believed that “imperialist” actions towards Greenland, Canada or the Panama Canal would be “very badly received by the American people”.
EU leaders are “deeply disturbed by Trump’s comments”, said a senior bloc official who has been involved in conversations between national capitals in recent days. They added that a visit by Trump’s son to Greenland on Tuesday had startled officials, who were now taking the president-elect’s remarks more seriously.
“Each day there’s a new concern for us [from Trump],” the senior EU official said, adding that the bloc’s leaders were in constant contact about how best to respond collectively.
The EU’s treaty contains a mutual defence clause that specifies if any member is “a victim of armed aggression on its territory”, other states “have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power”. The measure has been invoked once, by France, after the 2015 Paris terror attacks.
Barrot also called for the European Commission to take action against what France says is interference in European politics by Elon Musk, the Tesla boss and Trump confidant who has backed the far-right Alternative for Germany ahead of the country’s election and assailed Britain’s Labour government.
“Public debate cannot be relocated to large social media platforms owned by American billionaires without any regulatory oversight,” the French foreign minister added, noting recent EU legislation to moderate content online.
Barrot said he had “called on the European Commission several times to make more vigorous use of the tools that we have given it democratically to deter such behaviour”, adding that if Brussels cannot act it should “give that capacity back to the member states of the European Union, and to France”.
