The European Union is suspending formal approval of a trade deal reached with the United States last summer following President Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs over Europe's opposition to his push to acquire Greenland.
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Members of the European Parliament voted Wednesday to freeze the agreement Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen reached in July 2025 at Trump’s golf club in Turnberry, Scotland. Bernd Lange, chairman of Parliament’s International Trade Committee, said Trump’s tariff threats over Greenland are “undermining the stability and predictability of EU-U.S. trade relations.”
“Given the continued and escalating threats, including tariff threats, against Greenland and Denmark, and their European allies, we have been left with no alternative but to suspend work on the two Turnberry legislative proposals until the U.S. decides to re-engage on a path of cooperation rather than confrontation, and before any further steps are taken,” Lange said in a statement.
The move follows Trump’s announcement Saturday that starting Feb. 1, U.S. imports from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom will face a 10% tariff. The rate would increase to 25% on June 1.
Trump directly linked the tariffs to European opposition to Washington’s proposal to acquire Greenland, an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark that largely governs itself.
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The president has repeatedly argued that the U.S. should acquire Greenland for strategic and national security reasons amid increasing Chinese and Russian activity in the Arctic. European leaders, along with Greenland officials, have consistently rejected the proposal, affirming the territory’s sovereignty.
“If we have to choose between the United States and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark,” Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said during a press conference last week. “We choose NATO. We choose the Kingdom of Denmark. We choose the EU.”
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