![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/trump-again-1024x705.jpg\")
With Donald Trump threatening to take Greenland by force, and less likely to offer the island’s inhabitants veto power over mining projects, Europe may be too late to the party. | Jim Watson\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\nBut with United States President Donald Trump threatening to take Greenland by force, and less likely to offer the island’s inhabitants veto power over mining projects, Europe may be too late to the party.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe EU has for many years had a limited strategic engagement in Greenland\u2019s critical raw materials, meaning that Europe today risks having arrived late, just as the United States and China have intensified their interest,\u201d Kofod said.<\/p>\n
In a world shaped by Trump\u2019s increasingly belligerent foreign policy and China\u2019s hyperactive development of clean technology and mineral supply chains, Europe\u2019s neglect of Greenland\u2019s natural wealth is looking increasingly like a strategic blunder.<\/p>\n
With Donald Trump threatening to take Greenland by force, and less likely to offer the island’s inhabitants veto power over mining projects, Europe may be too late to the party. | Jim Watson\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
A hostile land<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not to say building mines in Greenland, with its mile-deep permanent ice sheet, would be easy.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf all the places in the world where you could extract critical raw materials, [Greenland] is very remote and not very easily accessible,\u201d\u00a0said Ditte Brasso S\u00f8rensen, senior analyst on EU climate and industrial policy at Think Tank Europa, pointing to the territory\u2019s \u201cvery difficult environmental circumstances.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The tiny population \u2014 fewer than 60,000 \u2014 and a lack of infrastructure also make it hard to build mines. “This is a logistical question,” said Eldur Olafsson, CEO of Amaroq, a gold mining company running one of the two operating mines in Greenland and also exploring rare earths and copper extraction opportunities. “How do you build mines? Obviously, with capital, equipment, but also people. [And] you need to build the whole infrastructure around those people because they cannot only be Greenlandic,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But with United States President Donald Trump threatening to take Greenland by force, and less likely to offer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[12199,5025,227,174,913,17581,229,26,5032,184,9959,814,2072,1584,1346,918,57,2432,159,19423,1111,8724,919,157,823,3655,19424,2255,5356,238,1535,4582,239,76,4247,9764],"class_list":["post-33208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-greenland","tag-antarctica","tag-buildings","tag-canada","tag-china","tag-climate-change","tag-critical-raw-materials","tag-defense","tag-denmark","tag-development","tag-donald-trump","tag-electric-vehicles","tag-energy","tag-environment","tag-foreign-policy","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-gas","tag-greenland","tag-infrastructure","tag-italy","tag-jeppe-kofod","tag-military","tag-mining","tag-natural-gas","tag-norway","tag-oil","tag-produce","tag-raw-materials","tag-regulatory","tag-research","tag-russia","tag-supply-chains","tag-tanks","tag-technology","tag-united-states","tag-venezuela","tag-water"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116175596788547282","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}