The bloc’s top diplomat commented on tensions over President Donald Trump’s Greenland push
Relations between the EU and US have “suffered a significant setback” in the past week because of President Donald Trump’s aggressive remarks regarding Greenland, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has stated.
Trump has demanded that Greenland, an autonomous territory of EU member Denmark, come under US control, citing its mineral wealth and strategic Arctic position. Earlier this week, he urged Copenhagen to initiate “immediate negotiations” for the transfer of the territory and threatened European opponents of this move with tariffs.
Although Trump later seemed to soften his stance, announcing on Wednesday that he and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte had reached a “framework for a future deal” on Greenland, he did not provide details about its future ownership within that framework.
Speaking ahead of an emergency European Council meeting on Thursday, Kallas implied that Washington wants to discard decades of cooperation with the bloc.
“Transatlantic relations have most definitely suffered a significant setback in the last week,” she declared.
Kallas pointed out that US actions towards the EU have become increasingly unpredictable even before the Greenland dispute.
“I believe that in this past year, we have come to realize that these relations are not what they used to be… Even though I think everyone is relieved by [Trump’s] recent announcements, during this one-year period, we [encountered] a great deal of unpredictability,” she said, adding, however, that Brussels remains “unwilling to abandon 80 years of good relations” and is prepared to work on them through future dialogue.
Relations between Washington and Brussels have been strained since Trump took office again last year, with recurring disputes over trade, defense, digital regulation, and the Ukraine conflict. Trump repeatedly used tariff threats against the EU, climaxing in a July trade situation that was widely regarded in Europe as humiliating, and accused European NATO nations of shirking their responsibilities within the alliance. His 2026 National Security Strategy further criticized the bloc, calling it strategically unreliable and warning of “civilizational erasure.”
This stance prompted German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to warn last month that the era of the so-called “Pax Americana” – the transatlantic order under which the US was the EU’s primary security guarantor – has ended.