Three reasons why the EU chief’s trip to Greenland is important as Trump moves forward

The EU chief is expected to announce new funding for the autonomous Danish territory when she makes her second trip to Nuuk, accompanied by Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen.

It comes shortly after Icelanders voted to reject restarting EU membership negotiations and as Trump renews his push to acquire Greenland on national security grounds.

Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen made a thinly veiled reference to Trump’s attempt to acquire the island ahead of von der Leyen’s visit.

“The EU has made clear its support for us in the geopolitical situation, while responding to our desire for an even greater partnership. I look forward to the coming days and sharing more about the importance of the Joint Declaration for Greenland,” Nielsen said in a statement shared with CNBC.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, did not respond to a request for comment from CNBC ahead of von der Leyen’s visit. A spokesman for Denmark’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment.

“We must never lose sight of what is happening with Russia and China. By this, I don’t just mean the sabotage activity and hybrid warfare that we see, and the focus has now been on Germany, but we actually again have question marks over the Russian trawlers around Svalbard,” Spohr told CNBC via video call.

“We also see that the Chinese and the Russians are conducting dual-use scientific actions in the Chukchi Sea, across the Bering Strait, further north. And, of course, the United States has said that they should not enter American national waters.”

These security concerns also extend to the so-called GIUK gap, Spohr said, referring to a strategic sea passage between Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom that links the Arctic to the Atlantic Ocean.

Trump has long advocated control of Greenland, a vast, sparsely populated and largely frozen island, but the US president’s fixation on the territory became a major transatlantic issue earlier this year.

Trump, who had refused to rule out using military force to annex Greenland, abruptly announced in late January, however, that he and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte had formed a “framework for a future agreement” regarding the territory.

Since then, a working group of representatives from the United States, Denmark and Greenland has been meeting to discuss the path forward.

Von der Leyen had previously opened the European Commission office in Nuuk in March 2024, establishing a permanent European presence in the country. The EU chief also signed cooperation agreements worth close to €94 million at the time.

“There are several layers, but the one we should never forget is the Greenland-Denmark relationship,” Andreas Raspotnik, a senior researcher at the think tank The Arctic Institute, told CNBC by phone.

Jozef Síkela, EU commissioner for international partnerships, recently highlighted some of the EU’s investments in Greenland during a meeting to discuss Arctic issues in Brussels.

“The EU has invested in education, fisheries and sustainable tourism in the Arctic for decades. €372 million in Arctic research through Horizon, €273 million through Interreg,” Síkela said on Tuesday at the EU Arctic Forum. “We are not newcomers here. But the current environment demands more,” he added.

“I think strategic thinking is changing in Brussels as they consider how they can even better include Greenland in, maybe they want to call it, the northern neighborhood,” Raspotnik said.

“I hear that term now too, you know, we have an eastern neighborhood, we have a southern neighborhood, but how can we define north? And by north, that means Iceland, that means Canada, and that means the United Kingdom,” he continued.

Greenland is scheduled to host a biannual national meeting on Monday with Denmark’s Frederiksen and Faroe Islands Prime Minister Beinir Johannesen.

“These times commit us to working closely. As if we were three people in the same boat, we must row together and ensure a common direction, as is the case in the current system,” said Nielsen.