Trump’s Greenland stance attracts EU counter-measures
The European Union is facing calls to implement a never-before-used set of economic countermeasures known as the “Anti-Coercion Instrument” as part of the bloc’s response to US President Donald Trump’s tariff threats against European allies over Greenland.
Trump vowed on Saturday to impose increased tariffs on EU members Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland, as well as Britain and Norway, until the US is allowed to buy Greenland, adding to the debate over the future of Denmark’s vast Arctic island.
All countries currently subject to 10 percent and 15 percent tariffs sent small numbers of military personnel to Greenland.
Cyprus, which holds the six-month rotating EU presidency, has summoned its ambassadors to an emergency meeting in Brussels on Sunday, which EU diplomats said will start at 17:00 local time.
A source close to French President Emmanuel Macron said he was “working to coordinate Europe’s response and pushing for the activation of the Anti-Coercion Instrument, which could limit access to public tenders in the bloc or restrict trade in services that the US has a surplus of with the EU.”
German Social Democrat Bernd Lange, who chairs the European Parliament’s trade committee, and Valerie Hayer, president of the centrist Renew Europe group, repeated the call in social media posts late Saturday, as did the German engineering association on Sunday.
But some EU diplomats said this was not the time to escalate the situation.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is closer to Trump than some other EU leaders, called the tariff threat “a mistake” on Sunday and said in a briefing during a trip to Korea that she had spoken to Trump a few hours earlier and told him what he thought.
He planned to call other European leaders later Sunday. Italy did not send troops to Greenland.
Asked on Sunday how the UK would react to the new tariffs, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said allies should work with the US to resolve the dispute.
He told Sky News: “Our position in Greenland is non-negotiable… It is in our collective interest to work together and not start a war of words.”
But tariff threats are calling into question the trade deals the US made with the UK in May and the European Union in July.
Limited agreements have already faced criticism for their lopsided nature, with the United States required to maintain broad tariffs and eliminate import duties on its partners.
The European Parliament now looks likely to suspend its work on the EU-US trade deal signed in July. Parliament was supposed to vote on repealing many EU import duties on January 26-27, but Manfred Weber, head of the European People’s Party, parliament’s largest group, said in a post on X late Saturday that approval was not possible for now.
Trump’s threat came as the European Union signed its largest-ever free trade agreement with South American bloc Mercosur in Paraguay. Von der Leyen said the agreement sent a very strong signal to the rest of the world.
“We choose fair trade over tariffs. We choose a productive, long-term partnership over isolation,” he said.
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