While Donald Trump has renewed his threat to annex Greenland, the inhabitants of the Arctic island have the opportunity to express themselves on the future of their territory on Tuesday, March 11.
Will Greenland become a new state from the United States of America? Donald Trump has renewed his expansionist wish to place the immense Arctic island under his fold during a speech before the American Congress on March 4. Groenland Prime Minister Mute Egede replied by categorically closing the door to any annexation during A television interview on the Danish channel DR March 10. This Tuesday, March 11, it is up to the Greenlanders to express themselves during the election for the legislative elections.
Unfortunately for the President of the United States, the 57,000 inhabitants of Greenland mainly reject the idea of being attached to the United States: according to an opinion survey carried out after the first threat of annexation formulated by Donald Trump on January 7, 2025, 85% of respondents have no intention of being part of the United States. More broadly, a large part of the Greenlanders wish to obtain the independence of their island. “We do not want to be American or Danish,” insisted the head of government of the island, Mute Egede, on television on the eve of the legislative election. Arctic territory is a constitutive country of the Kingdom of Denmark from the colonial era. If since the 1960s most Greenlandic policies have been taken by local elected officials, Denmark continues to exercise the sovereign functions on this territory.
The Inuit Inuit Ataqatigiit party, classified as a socialist and ecological, to which the Prime Minister and his social democratic ally Siumut belongs are favorable to independence, as almost all Greenlandic political forces. The quest for the independence of the Arctic Island should therefore become one of the priority subjects of the coming years with a “robust” roadmap according to Mute Egede. This quest has been reinforced by the threats of recurrent annexation on the part of the United States and the fact that it is carried by Donald Trump whose “very unpredictable” personality worries the inhabitants of Greenland, according to the Prime Minister of the Arctic Island.
Previous attempts to annex
The head of the Groenlandian government seems to want to limit his relations with the United States as much as possible: “With what recently happened, what the American president said and does, we do not want to be so close [des Etats-Unis] As we may have wanted to be before, “he explained, reproaching the White House tenant for not having treated the Greenlanders” with respect “. Note that the United States has already proposed in Denmark to buy Greenland several times, in vain: in 1946 with an offer at $ 100 million signed by President Truman and in 2019 by his first mandate.
If it is a question of distancing its distance from the United States, the Prime Minister of Greenland also calls for strengthening the position of the Arctic territory “within the Western Alliance”: “There are questions of security and defense policy which oblige us to combine ourselves with other countries with which we are already allied”, including those of the European Union. Indeed, the American threat is not the only one weighing on the territory: the island is also coveted by Russia and China for its strategic location and its very rich soils.