The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, is heading to Greenland as melting Arctic ice, demand for green-technology raw materials and competition from China increase the territory’s strategic importance.
While not in the EU, the autonomous Danish territory is of strong interest to Brussels, especially for highly sought after raw materials – it believes it has 25 of the 34 that it needs.
During a two-day trip with the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, Von der Leyen will first travel to the Faroe Islands on Thursday before visiting Greenland the following day to open a new EU Commission office in the capital, Nuuk.
It comes as Von der Leyen seeks a second term in office as the president of the EU’s executive body. The EU’s climate chief, Wopke Hoekstra, said this week that the EU must speed up green efforts after the EU election.
Tomas Baert, a special adviser to Von der Leyen on trade and international partnerships, said Greenland had many of the raw materials – such as rare earth elements and metals – that it needed for its green transition.
“We lack some of the access to some of those materials. So having partners that can process, that can produce, that can mine these critical raw materials is critically important. But we do that fundamentally with a win-win spirit.”
Greenland, he said, “has about 27 of the strategic and critical raw materials that we have defined as being critical or strategic in the European Union. So enormous potential, but it is very much a question now of making that a reality. We are still at a fairly early stage when it comes to the exploration and the investments that are needed.”
The Greenlandic government said that it in fact has 25 of the materials sought by the EU, but that it is “still a big chunk”. The European Commission later confirmed that Greenland had 25 of the 34 materials sought.
The visit comes months after the commission signed a partnership with Greenland in November.
Baert said the EU’s approach was with “full respect” for the partner country and that the EU would bring partnership, knowledge and create value locally for Greenlanders. “We are not looking to simply, let’s say, extract and run. Others around the world are doing this,” he said. “China in particular, this is a model that’s particularly followed by them, but also by others.”
He said the trip, during which Von der Leyen will also visit evidence of the climate crisis, should be seen as “geopolitical”, with the intention of telling Greenland: “Even if you’re not part of the European Union, you’re part of Europe.”
He praised Greenland’s alignment with many of the EU sanctions against Russia and said: “We really want to take our relationship [with Greenland] to the next level.” The new office, he added, was a means of keeping “our ear close to the ground”.
Naaja H Nathanielsen, Greenland’s minister for business, trade and raw materials, said the new office would “serve as a local platform for transatlantic cooperation between the European Union and Greenland and will build on already existing and extensive relationship with have with the European Union over decades.”
She said the minerals agreement is about “benefits on both sides”. Greenland needs bilateral cooperation to develop its mineral sector, she said, which requires significant capital and long-term investment.
“Development of mines, exports of minerals is of course an important issue for the diversification of the Greenlandic economy,” she said. While fishing, the current top source of income, is not expected to be overtaken for many years, the tourism and minerals sectors are important focuses for growth.
“If the western world wants sustainable diversified secure value chains, some of these minerals will need to come from countries that are smaller, like Greenland. We don’t have the economic muscles to invest ourselves in the mineral sector,” she said.
In order to enable the green transition, a “helping hand” from larger economies would be needed, she added.
The trip also comes at a critical point for Denmark’s relationship with Greenland, amid a growing independence movement.
There is also outrage over the 4,500 women and girls who are believed to have been fitted with contraceptive coils without their consent or knowledge by Danish doctors – some of the girls were as young as 12 – in an attempt to reduce Greenland’s population. As those affected continue to come forward – a group of 143 women has sued the Danish state – they are still waiting for a full official response from the Danish government.
The prime minister’s office declined to comment on whether Frederiksen would be addressing the historical violation during the visit.
During their visit to the Faroe Islands on Thursday, Frederiksen will meet prime minister Aksel V Johannesen and Von der Leyen will sign an agreement for broader and deeper cooperation between the Faroe Islands and the EU.
