EU considers retaliatory measures over Trump Greenland tariff ‘blackmail’
The anti-coercion law, which has so far never been used, enables the EU to impose punitive economic measures on a country seeking to force a policy change.
The EU was weighing up retaliatory tariffs on American goods and even deploying its most serious economic sanctions against the US as European leaders lined up to criticise Donald Trump’s threat to levy new taxes on imports from eight nations who oppose his attempt to annex Greenland – which one minister called “blackmail”.
“Tariff threats undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral,” the leaders of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland said in a joint statement. “We are committed to upholding our sovereignty.” The EU’s top diplomats met for crisis talks on Sunday and discussed reviving a plan to levy tariffs on €93bn of US goods, which was suspended after last summer’s trade deal with Trump.
France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, called on fellow leaders to activate the EU’s powerful anti-coercion instrument – commonly known as the “big bazooka” – if Trump went ahead with his tariff threats, French media reported, citing his team.
After the talks broke up, the head of the European Council António Costa announced an emergency EU summit, which is likely to take place on Thursday. The EU, he said, showed “readiness to defend ourselves against any form of coercion”.
Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said Trump’s tariffs would be a mistake, and the Dutch foreign minister, David van Weel, described the US president’s threats to allies as “blackmail”, as reaction from European leaders continued to pile up.
The anti-coercion law, which has so far never been used, enables the EU to impose punitive economic measures on a country seeking to force a policy change.
Trump on Sunday doubled down on his threats against Greenland, claiming in a social media post that Nato had been telling Denmark for 20 years that it had to deal with the “Russian threat” to the territory and that it “unable to do anything about it”. He added: “Now it is time, and it will be done!!!” According to diplomatic sources, the EU was also considering reactivating a package of counter-tariffs against €93bn US goods, which were drawn up in response to Trump’s previous economic threats but suspended after the two sides struck a trade deal last summer. The measures would impose duties on US cars, industrial goods, food and drink.
The ambassadors of the EU’s 27 member states were meeting on Sunday in an emergency session after Trump threatened tariffs on the six EU nations plus the UK and Norway.
But the EU remains far from agreement on retaliatory measures against Trump. “At present, there is no question of deploying the ACI [anti-coercion instrument] or any other trade instrument against the US,” an EU diplomat said. The €93bn counter-tariffs are suspended until 6 February and several sources stressed the desire for dialogue with the US.
A second EU diplomat said the situation was seen as very serious: “There was a clear and broad understanding that Europe and the EU cannot start reneging on key principles in the international order, such as territorial integrity.” In a joint statement, those countries said their Danish-led military exercise Arctic Endurance was in a commitment to strengthening security “as a shared transatlantic interest” and “poses no threat to anyone”.
Trump had accused the countries, which have all deployed troops to Greenland in the last week, of playing “a very dangerous game” and said they would be subject to 10% tariffs from 1 February, increasing to 25% from 1 June.
In a Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump said the tariffs would be levied “until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland”, a largely autonomous territory that is part of Denmark.
The threats to Greenland have cast a long shadow over Nato and thrown into doubt the EU-US trade deal that the bloc signed with Trump last August. The leader of the European parliament’s largest group, the centre-right European People’s party, Manfred Weber, tweeted on Saturday that “approval is not possible at this stage”, a conclusion Socialist and Green MEPs had already reached.
Ratification of the deal, which would reduce EU tariffs on some US goods to zero, had been expected by February.
Macron said on Saturday that Europe would not change course in its opposition to a US takeover of Greenland, declaring: “No intimidation or threat will influence us – neither in Ukraine, nor in Greenland, nor anywhere else in the world when we are confronted with such situations.” In a joint statement, the EU leaders Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa said tariffs would “undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral”. The pair, who had been in Paraguay signing a trade deal with four South American countries in the Mercosur bloc, are understood to have been blindsided by Trump’s latest threats.
Meloni, one Trump’s strongest EU allies, told journalists in Seoul that she had spoken to him “and told him what I think”, describing the proposed sanctions as a “mistake”.
The Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, who bonded with Trump over their shared love of golf, said European countries stood united in support of Denmark and Greenland. “Tariffs would undermine the transatlantic relationship and risk a dangerous downward spiral,” he wrote on X.
Germany’s deputy chancellor, Lars Klingbeil, said his country would always extend a hand to the US in the search for common solutions, but “we will not be blackmailed, and there will be a European response”.
A spokesperson for the Bundeswehr said on Sunday the reconnaissance mission to Greenland had been completed as planned, after the German newspaper Bild reported that German troops were flying home.
Speaking for the British government, the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, said Trump’s decision on tariffs was “completely wrong” but she declined to say if the UK would retaliate with its own countermeasures.
Spain’s leader, Pedro Sánchez, said a US invasion of Greenland would make Vladimir Putin “the happiest man on Earth” by legitimising the Russian president’s attempted invasion of Ukraine and sounding the “death knell for Nato”.
Sánchez’s interview to La Vanguardia, published on Sunday but apparently conducted before Trump’s latest threat, reflects the broad European support for the Danish territory.
After the Trump broadside, the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, tweeted: “China and Russia must be having a field day.” She went on: “If Greenland’s security is at risk, we can address this inside Nato. Tariffs risk making Europe and the United States poorer and undermine our shared prosperity.” Kallas warned against the dispute “distract[ing] us from the our core task of helping to end Russia’s war against Ukraine”.
Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who was in Washington last week for talks about Greenland, said Trump’s announcement came as a surprise, after the “constructive” talks held with the vice-president, JD Vance, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio. “The purpose of the increased military presence in Greenland, to which the president refers, is to enhance security in the Arctic,” Rasmussen wrote.
Trump’s latest threat underscores allies’ seemingly impossible job to appease Trump without ceding Greenland to the US. Trump criticised the motives of countries that deployed troops to Greenland in the name of enhanced security while also mocking Denmark for not doing enough to defend the territory. “China and Russia want Greenland, and there is not a thing that Denmark can do about it. They currently have two dogsleds as protection, one added recently,” he wrote.
Trump’s Greenland tariff threat appears to have fired up EU leaders Read more Denmark announced last week that it was increasing its military presence on the island, while troops from the seven other countries targeted with tariffs went to Greenland on a short scoping mission designed in part to show the US that European Nato members were serious about Arctic security.
The threats represent an “existential crisis” for Nato, said one former official at the transatlantic alliance. Robert Pszczel, now a senior fellow at the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw, wrote on X: “Pretending that we are not dealing with an existential crisis for Nato is no longer possible nor desirable.
“Threats made by the current US administration towards allies of the [US] and the use of economic blackmail are direct violations of article one and two of the North Atlantic Treaty,” he wrote, referencing parts of the agreement on peaceful settlement of disputes among allies and promoting “peaceful and friendly international relations”.
The head of the European parliament’s trade committee, Bernd Lange, said the EU needed to activate its anti-coercion instrument, a law that allows wide-ranging economic sanctions in response to hostile actions from another state.
The anti-coercion instrument, originally conceived in response to China, allows the EU to take wide-ranging punitive measures against a country seeking to use economic coercion, such as tariffs or investment restrictions.
Lange, a German Social Democrat, said Trump was using trade as an instrument of political coercion, adding: “The EU cannot simply move on to business as usual.”
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