‘We must stand together’: European leaders warn Trump over Greenland threat

European officials have warned Donald Trump against threatening “sovereign borders” after the US President-elect refused to rule out military action to seize Greenland.

The rebukes on Wednesday were led by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who said the principle of inviolability of borders applies to every country, no matter how powerful.

He added Trump’s statements a day earlier had sparked “notable incomprehension” among other European Union leaders he had spoken with.

“Borders must not be moved by force. This principle applies to every country, whether in the East or the West,” Scholz later wrote on X.

“In talks with our European partners, there is an uneasiness regarding recent statements from the US. It is clear: We must stand together.”

France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, also weighed in on Wednesday, saying Greenland was “European territory” and there was “no question of the EU letting other nations in the world, whoever they may be … attack its sovereign borders”.

EU officials, meanwhile, largely sought to avoid wading into the morass, although a spokesperson did confirm to reporters that Greenland was covered by a mutual defence clause binding its members to assist one another in case of attack.

The disquiet comes after Trump on Tuesday again floated his desire for the US to take control of Greenland as well as the Panama Canal, an arterial Latin American water route that the US ceded control of to Panama in 1999.

When asked by a reporter if he would rule out using military force or economic coercion to gain that control, Trump replied, “I’m not going to commit to that.”

“We need Greenland for national security purposes,” Trump later said, nodding to the island’s strategic position in the Arctic, where Russia, China and the US have jockeyed for control in recent years.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, French government spokesperson Sophie Primas warned there was a “form of imperialism” in Trump’s statements.

“Today, we are seeing the rise in blocs, we can see this as a form of imperialism, which materialises itself in the statements that we saw from Mr Trump on the annexation of an entire territory,” she said.

Officials in Denmark, meanwhile, struck a more conciliatory tone than their European counterparts.

Foreign minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said Copenhagen is “open to a dialogue with the Americans on how we can cooperate, possibly even more closely than we already do, to ensure that American ambitions are fulfilled”.