85% of Greenlandes do not want to be American while Denmark announces 4% in their defense expense

Donald Trump has a job ahead if he really intends that Greenland becomes American. According to a survey published by the Groenlandic newspaper Sermitsiaq and the Danish Berlingske, Only 6% of Greenlandes want to be part of the US. 85% prefer to remain in the community of the Kingdom of Denmark, within which both their island and the Feroe are autonomous territories. 9% are not clear.

If your objective with the announcement that you want to “possess and control” Greenland is rather than Denmark and NATO in general significantly increase its military spending, then Trump is on its way to achieving it. Danish defense minister, Liberal Troels Lund Poulen, has declared the newspaper Politics that the interest of the US president on the Arctic Island contains “clearly positive elements” and has announced that Danish military spending in 2025 will reach 4%.

In any case, the survey of Sermitsiaq y Berlingske It seems to disassemble one of Trump’s main arguments to justify that Greenlanders become American citizens. “People there want to be with us,” he said last weekend in a meeting with the press aboard the Air Force One. “They don’t like how they have been treated by Denmark, but we do like it.”

With April 6 as a deadline, Greenlandia will celebrate autonomic elections this year. The overwhelming result of the survey makes it virtually impossible for some party to risk including in its program the possibility of future adhesion to the US. At the moment, the only leader who has been favorable to some type of more official association to Denmark has been Pele Bobberg, leader of Naleraq (the most clearly independence formation of the island) and former minister in several autonomic coalition governments between 2018 and 2022.

“Wanting independence does not mean wanting American citizenship, but imagining an independent Greenland without the US is a utopia,” Broberg told the Danish public chain TV2. “We will only be interested in Denmark while Trump speaks of us”. Deputies of other more moderately independence parties, such as Aaja Chemnitz, of the governmental Inuit Ataqatigiit, have come to say that the statements of the leader of Naleraq are “practically a crime of high treason.”

The Danish Prime Minister, the social democrat Mette Frederiksen, has been prudently satisfied with the survey: “I am glad if what he expresses is that a majority of Greenlandes wants to continue the close collaboration with Denmark Today, because everything changes over time. “

For the head of Defense, Troels Lund Poulen, the survey “is a clear message from the Greenlanders about how they see all this situation”, as well as “a sign that, despite the fact that There may also be other ambitions, they are basically satisfied with the dialoguethe cooperation and development that exist within the community of the kingdom. “

Poulen, who as a liberal leader is one of the most prominent members of the Danish tripartite government (together with social democratic and moderate), considers that Trump’s calls for Europeans to considerably increase their defense expenditure are good news: “His interest involves A attention call for Denmark regarding the security situation in the kingdom’s community. Europe that the US does not want to continue paying the security bill. As a call for attention, it results in many aspects liberating, because we will now have a discussion about the will to defense in Europe. Not only a discussion about whether we believe that the US will continue to guarantee our protection. “

Poulen has also announced that Denmark’s military spending in 2025 could reach 4% of GDP, which would exceed at half a point the recommendation of NATO general secretary, Dutch Mark Rutte, that member countries reach 3, 5%. Trump has repeatedly demanded that NATO members spend 5% in the near future. The Danish posture strongly contrasts with that of Spain, whose expense is only 1.3%, one of the lowest in the Atlantic Alliance, and will have to wait for 2030 to rise to 2%.

“It is still early to know if we will end at 3.5 or 4%, but there is no doubt that the invoice will be much larger than we had thought,” said Pouls in Politics. “That Trump asks for 5% and proposes the American control of Greenland reflects his concern about the situation in the Arctic.”