Greenland wants to decide foreign policy issues on own, without Denmark
Greenland wants greater autonomy on issues of its foreign policy, Prime Minister Mute Egede said, adding that he is tired of the Danish ambassador always being present at talks with foreign officials.
“When I need to talk with a leader of a foreign country, I have to have the Danish ambassador next to me,” he told a news conference after talking the matter over with Danish counterpart Mette Frederiksen. “This is where we want to have our own voice. It’s only natural to want your country to develop based on your own values.
“The sides are negotiating the issue, the Danish prime minister noted. “The issue of expanding foreign policy possibilities dominated the agenda [of the talks]. This is what we are currently working on, striving to find the best way forward together,” Frederiksen said.
According to Egede, Greenlanders just want independence and “to be the king of their own castle,” something most people can relate to. “We don’t want to be Danish, we don’t want to be Americans. We want to be Greenlanders, but that doesn’t mean we need to break off ties with Denmark,” he explained.
Frederiksen, in turn, noted that it is up to the residents of Greenland to decide the future of their island, emphasizing that their desire to stand on their own is “legitimate and understandable.”
Last fall, she called on her colleagues on the Nordic Council, a body for inter-parliamentary cooperation among the Nordic countries, to support the idea of giving a say to the Faroe Islands and Greenland (autonomies part of Denmark) on issues of foreign policy, security, and defence, saying that these entities should be treated as equals within the organization.
This statement came after no representatives from the Faroe Islands had been invited to a meeting with Vladimir Zelensky during the Nordic Council summit in Reykjavik.
In May, Greenland’s authorities said that they were suspending the island’s membership in the Nordic Council because its representatives were not invited to take part in discussing such vital issues as foreign policy, security, and defence.
