German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) has welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump’s change of course in the dispute over Greenland. Trump had taken “the right path,” Merz said on Thursday in an English-language speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Any threat to seize European territory by force would be “unacceptable,” he added, warning that new tariffs would “also undermine the foundations of the transatlantic relationship.”
After weeks of threats, Trump announced a preliminary understanding on the Greenland issue on Wednesday following talks with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Davos. Rutte said he and Trump had discussed ways for NATO to secure the entire Arctic. Trump stated that he would therefore refrain from imposing the punitive tariffs he had announced against Germany and seven other European countries.
Merz said in his speech that the U.S. administration had justified its “vehement” demands for “more influence in Greenland” by pointing to “security threats” in the high north. “We welcome that the United States is taking seriously the threat posed by Russia in the Arctic,” the chancellor said. Securing the high north through NATO was “a shared transatlantic interest,” and Germany was committed to “exactly that.”
“We are doing this within NATO and will expand our engagement,” Merz said. European NATO members, he added, needed to “do more” in the Arctic. “Our neighbors and partners in Europe, including Denmark and the people of Greenland, can count on our solidarity,” he said. “We will protect Denmark, Greenland and the north from the threat posed by Russia.”
However, the principles on which the transatlantic partnership rests, “sovereignty and territorial integrity”, must be upheld, Merz stressed. The German government supported discussions between Denmark, Greenland and the United States “on the basis of these principles.” Merz said he had spoken about this in recent days with Trump, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and NATO’s Rutte. The goal of these talks, he said, was “an agreement on closer cooperation among the allies in the high north and beyond.”
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