Main Points
- Emergency summit of European Union leaders called later this week to figure out response to US president Donald Trump’s ambitions to take over Greenland and hit allies with fresh tariffs.
- Ambassadors from the European Union’s 27 countries conclude emergency meeting over Trump’s Greenland-related threats on tariffs.
- The governments of the eight European countries threatened with US tariffs have criticised comments coming from Washington as a breach in Europe-US relations and warned of a “downward spiral”.
Key Reads
- ‘Yankee, go home’: Greenlanders protest US takeover plans
- European countries threatened by tariffs warn of ‘downward spiral’ in US relations
- European leaders may soon drop the don’t-upset-the-toddler approach to Trump relations
- ‘I’ve not felt so insecure before’: Greenlanders prepare for crisis amid a lack of official advice
- Cliff Taylor, Opinion: Why Ireland should be worried about Trump’s tariffs threat over Greenland
Follow here for live updates.
That’s it for our updates this evening. Thanks for following. We’ll have more coverage of Trump’s Greenland and tariff threats, and the emergency EU summit, from our correspondents next week.
What does this decision to call an emergency EU summit mean?
The European Council, which brings the 27 national leaders together, alongside council president António Costa and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, is the union’s top decision making body.
Calling an emergency summit signals a sense among governments and the EU institutions that some big calls need to be made, in what may be a juncture in Europe’s future relationship with this White House administration.
A senior European Commission source confirmed to The Irish Times that a package of counter tariffs, drawn up by the EU last year, which would hit €93 billion worth of US trade, is now on the table as one response.
The possibility of turning to the EU’s powerful anti coercion instrument, to target US multinationals and restrict their ability to operate in Europe, in a bid to pressure Trump to back down, is also likely to feature as part of the summit talks.
A firm response from the EU would reopen the prospect of a full blown trade transatlantic war, something the Irish Government has always been desperate to avoid, given how exposed Ireland would be from the economic fallout.
The response from Trump will be difficult to predict, but he won’t back down just because a meeting of EU leaders has been called.
In a statement on Sunday evening, European Council president António Costa, who chairs the EU summits, said the union was ready to defend itself against “any form of coercion”.
“Given the significance of recent developments and in order to further coordinate, I have decided to convene an extraordinary meeting of the European Council in the coming days,” he said. Jack Power, Europe Correspondent.
An emergency summit of European Union leaders has been called to game out how to push back against US president Donald Trump’s ambitions to take over Greenland and hit allies with fresh tariffs, Jack Power reports.
It is understood the emergency summit will likely be held in Brussels towards the end of this week, possibly on Thursday.
A meeting of ambassadors from the EU’s 27 states has broken up in recent minutes, after several hours of discussions on the union’s response to the latest escalation in the diplomatic row over Greenland, which was soured EU-US relations.
Options likely to be on the table as possible ways to hit back at US pressure on Greenland include a package of counter tariffs, drawn up by the EU last year, which would hit €93 billion worth of US trade.
One diplomatic source said they expected talks about counter tariffs would feature in the EU’s possible response.
The French government is expected to call for the EU to turn to the powerful anti coercion instrument, to target US multinationals, to leverage Mr Trump to back down from his demands and tariff threats.
A firm response from European powers and the EU would reopen the prospect of a full blown trade war between Europe and the US, something the Government has always been desperate to avoid.
Keir Starmer has told Donald Trump he is wrong to threaten tariffs against Nato allies. The UK prime minister spoke to the US president on Sunday, as well as to Mette Frederiksen, the Danish PM, whose country’s territory includes Greenland, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, and Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general.
“In all his calls, the prime minister reiterated his position on Greenland. He said that security in the high north is a priority for all Nato allies in order to protect Euro-Atlantic interests,” a Downing Street summary of the calls said, according to reports from The Guardian. “He also said that applying tariffs on allies for pursuing the collective security of Nato allies is wrong.”
Trump’s calls for the US to take over Greenland has ignited fresh criticism from the president’s own Republican party, with some saying it could hurt the US economically or strain the Nato military alliance, The Guardian reports.
Such Republicans included US senators Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski, who were part of a bipartisan group to travel to Denmark to discuss concerns in Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory.
Both Tillis and Murkowski sharply criticised new tariffs threatened on Saturday by Trump on a slew of European countries – including Denmark, Germany, France and the UK – until the US is allowed to purchase Greenland.
Murkowski wrote on X that the tariffs were “unnecessary, punitive, and a profound mistake”, coming after Nato allies deployed troops in Greenland on Thursday in response to Trump’s threats to forcefully take the Arctic island if needed.
European capitals may hit the US with €93 billion worth of tariffs or restrict American companies from the bloc’s market in response to Donald Trump’s threats to Nato allies opposed to his campaign to take over Greenland, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
The retaliation measures are being drawn up to give European leaders leverage in pivotal meetings with Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, the FT report said, citing officials involved in the preparations for the meetings in Switzerland.
There will be growing calls in the coming days for the European Union to take its so-called “big bazooka” off the shelf and put it down on the negotiating table, Jack Power writes.
Valérie Hayer, a senior French MEP and ally of Emmanuel Macron, has called for the EU to trigger its anti coercion instrument (ACI), which would give the European Commission emergency powers to restrict US companies ability to operate in the EU market.
The ACI is intended as a way for the EU to fight back against economic coercion from another state. It has never been used before, and a months-long investigation by the commission would first be required to confirm such a response was justified.
Macron was known to have talked about turning to the nuclear option during tense periods of EU-US tariff negotiations last year. The Irish Government always opposed talk of reaching for the ACI, instead appealing for the EU to avoid antagonising the White House and to cut a deal sucking up 15 per cent tariffs last summer.
Fianna Fáil MEP Barry Andrews said the EU needed to stop its “appeasement” of Trump and use the anti coercion instrument to hit back.
“This would mean blocking US access to the lucrative EU market for certain goods and services such as the defence sector and public procurement market. President Trump only respects strength. We need to show him that enough is enough,” he said.
What is this meeting of EU ambassadors?
An emergency meeting gathering the ambassadors of the EU’s 27 states is taking place this evening in Brussels.
The ambassadors gather once or twice a week in the normal course of events, providing an important clearing house and cog in the EU policy making machine, where political decisions are teed up and compromises slowly worked out between the senior diplomats. Ireland will be represented at the meeting by Aingeal O’Donoghue, the State’s top EU diplomat.
The huddle, known as a Coreper meeting, was called at short notice, to allow EU governments to discuss Trump’s tariff threats, which ratcheted up the pressure in his bid for the US to take over Greenland.
The meeting is being held in “restricted” format, meaning a wider group of diplomats and officials that usually attend will not be able to observe the closed-door discussion. That could mean the level of information about the talks that we get after the meeting breaks up could be limited.
Nato secretary general Mark Rutte said on Sunday that he had spoken with US pPresident Donald Trump about the security situation in Greenland and the Arctic.
“We will continue working on this, and I look forward to seeing him in Davos later this week,” Rutte wrote on social media platform X.
European countries have jointly hit back at US president Donald Trump’s threatened new trade tariffs, warning the escalating dispute over Greenland risks heading into a “dangerous downward spiral”, our Europe Correspondent, Jack Power, writes.
The near unprecedented schism in transatlantic relations, caused by Mr Trump issuing fresh threats of steep tariffs on European allies if Greenland is not sold to the US, has prompted a diplomatic scramble by European capitals in the crosshairs.
In a joint statement, the governments of France, Germany, the UK, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, criticised the comments coming from Washington as a breach in Europe-US relations.
“Tariff threats undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral. We will continue to stand united and co-ordinated in our response. We are committed to upholding our sovereignty,” the statement said.
The involvement of troops from several European countries in a Danish military exercise in the Arctic was “pre-coordinated” and posed no threat to anyone, the governments said.
The European countries reaffirmed they would stand firmly behind the principles of “sovereignty and territorial integrity” in the Greenland dispute.
“We stand in full solidarity with the Kingdom of Denmark and the people of Greenland,” the statement said.
