Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede said on Monday that the island is not for sale, in response to some recent statements by US President-elect Donald Trump. In fact, on Sunday Trump said he wanted to take control of Greenland, thus taking it away from Denmark: Greenland is a nation within the Kingdom of Denmark, and has had the right to self-government since 1979. Trump had said that “for the purposes of national security and freedom throughout the world, the United States of America believes that ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
In a statement Egede responded as follows:
Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and never will be.
It is not the first time that Trump has said that the United States is willing to buy the island. It had already happened in 2019, when during his first term as president he motivated the interest by saying that it could be “a great real estate deal”. For a few days American newspapers talked about this possibility, but in 2021 during Joe Biden's administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken closed the discussion during a visit to Greenland by saying that the United States was not interested in its purchase.
Trump spoke about it again in the same days in which he said that the United States should regain control of the Panama Canal, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
The Danish government has made it known that it is eager to collaborate with the new US administration, but reiterated that Greenland is not for sale, as it already did in 2019.
