Paris
CNN
—
French President Emmanuel Macron touched down in Greenland on Sunday, for an official visit designed to bolster European support for the Danish territory, which is still batting away advances from the Trump administration to acquire it for the United States.
Macron is the first foreign leader to visit the resource-rich island since US President Donald Trump began his campaign to buy or annex Greenland, which he insists the US needs for national security purposes.
Asked about Trump’s ambitions as he arrived in Greenland, Macron is cited by Reuters as saying: “I don’t think that’s what allies do… it’s important that Denmark and the Europeans commit themselves to this territory, which has very high strategic stakes and whose territorial integrity must be respected.”
A source at the Élysée Palace said ahead of the visit that the French president’s trip had a “dimension of European solidarity and one of strengthening sovereignty and territorial integrity,” without mentioning the Trump administration’s threats to purchase Greenland, or take it by force.
Additionally, Macron’s visit would focus on Arctic security, climate change and Greenland’s economic development, the source added.
During his time on the world’s biggest island, the French leader will tour a glacier, a hydroelectric power station and a Danish warship moored near the semiautonomous territory’s capital, Nuuk, per the Élysée.
“The deeps are not for sale, any more than Greenland is for sale, any more than Antarctica or the high seas are for sale,” Macron said on June 9 as he opened a United Nations conference on the oceans in Nice, France.
Trump’s intentions for Greenland can’t be far from the French president’s thoughts on his first visit to the Arctic territory, which Macron will conduct alongside Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland’s political leader, Jens-Frederik Nielsen.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said in January that Paris had “started discussing (the deployment of French troops) with Denmark,” but that Copenhagen did not want to proceed with the idea.
Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in buying the island, or the US taking it by military or economic coercion, even as NATO ally Denmark and Greenland have firmly rejected the idea. Last month, the US president renewed his threat of using military force to annex the territory.
US Vice President JD Vance also made a stopover to visit American troops in Greenland in late March. During that trip, the vice president made a high-profile case for US control of the island.
He told Greenland residents they would be better off “coming under the United States’ security umbrella than you have been under Denmark’s security umbrella.”
In a move widely seen as an effort to ease American ambitions for the territory, on June 12 Denmark’s parliament widened a military agreement with Washington to allow US bases on Danish soil. US soldiers had previously been based at Danish facilities.
Denmark is also moving to bolster its military presence in Greenland, some 1,500 miles from the Danish mainland, including with fighter jets to patrol the western coastline toward the US and a navy frigate, per Greenland’s parliament.
