Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, will hold parliamentary elections on March 11 with independence a key campaign theme after US President Donald Trump said he wants control over the world's biggest island. FRANCE 24's Sharon Gaffney speaks to Matt Qvortrup, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Studies at the Australian National University. He says that Trump is behaving towards Greenland like Saddam Hussein did with Kuwait.
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00:00This is Apropos.
00:04It's shaping up to be Greenland's most closely-watched election ever.
00:09Voters on the world's biggest island,
00:11a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark,
00:13are heading to the polls to choose a new parliament this Tuesday.
00:17The snap ballot was called after Donald Trump doubled down
00:20on his ambitions for the United States to acquire the Arctic island.
00:24Our senior reporter, Clovis Casale, is there.
00:30A snowstorm approaches Nuuk,
00:32and Jess Bertelsen takes a short break at his office
00:35before heading out for more campaigning.
00:39The long-time leader of Greenland's main labor union
00:42is running for the first time in a general election.
00:45Why? Because of Donald Trump.
00:51Three months ago, we woke up to a completely different world.
00:55We don't know where we stand,
00:56The country that has been our ally and protected us for years
01:00suddenly said it could take our land by force.
01:02It's worrying.
01:10He wants his semi-autonomous island
01:12to have strong cooperation with Denmark and Europe
01:16instead of turning towards the United States.
01:20He fears for the Greenlandic social model
01:23if President Trump manages to get his hands on this island
01:26in the Arctic.
01:30I'm not doing this for me.
01:32If I'm running in this election,
01:33it's for my children and grandchildren.
01:37I want to make sure they have a good life
01:39when I'm no longer on this earth.
01:44Never before has an election here attracted so much attention
01:47from around the world.
01:49It's overwhelming for many Greenlanders used to a quiet life.
01:54They were shocked to hear Donald Trump
01:55say he would have their island one way or another.
01:59This engineer who likes the US president was surprised.
02:02I don't know what exactly he's thinking about
02:05using the words have Greenland.
02:07In Greenland, we can use land for a certain purpose
02:11like building a house or maybe a school,
02:15you know, but you can't own the ground.
02:19It's very scary for me
02:21because we don't want this life on the outside
02:28and I don't want to be in the USA.
02:33If Donald Trump wants Greenland,
02:35it's for its fabulous natural and mineral resources
02:38as well as its strategic location in the Arctic.
02:40The people here know it and according to a poll,
02:4385% of them are opposed to the idea
02:46of being part of the United States.
02:50For more on what's at stake,
02:51we're joined now by Matt Gvortrup,
02:53Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Studies
02:56at the Australian National University.
02:58Matt, thanks so much for being with us.
03:00Firstly, we got an idea from that report there,
03:04but how completely has Donald Trump
03:06overshadowed this election campaign?
03:10This has been the main issue of the election campaign.
03:14In fact, there's been no other issue
03:16and it's also sort of firmed up the position
03:19of a number of parties.
03:21Traditionally, there have been parties
03:22that were opposed to independence,
03:25but those parties have been now reduced to one party,
03:28the Atasut party,
03:30which is a sort of conservative party traditionally.
03:34So all the political parties in one way or other
03:38are now in favour of independence.
03:40So that issue has defined it,
03:42but it's also created a kind of unity.
03:45The issue now is how quickly it will go
03:48so the AI party, Inuit Afrikaafelit party,
03:53is in favour of independence as soon as possible,
03:56whereas the Sioumoud party
03:58and those two parties are in coalition together.
04:01The Sioumoud party has flip-flopped a little bit.
04:04They changed their opinion,
04:05so they wanted to have independence,
04:07and now they want a commission to look at the possibilities
04:11before there can be a referendum.
04:14The thing here is that,
04:15a little bit like New Caledonia, in fact,
04:18there's been an agreement
04:19with the metropolitan Denmark and Greenland
04:23that there can be a referendum at any time,
04:26that the people in Greenland want that,
04:29but the people in Greenland currently are benefiting
04:32from a so-called block grant from Denmark
04:35where they get money,
04:36and that's going to be phased out
04:38as they get more resources out of the ground,
04:41and that's been a little bit slow.
04:43So when Trump is talking about getting the resources,
04:47the resources are actually pretty hard to get,
04:50and the other thing that Trump's talking about, of course,
04:52is taking control of it.
04:53There's already a very large army base
04:57and an airport base in the north of Greenland
05:01that the Americans have been using since the 1950s.
05:04Not always, in a way,
05:06that's been beneficial to the Greenlanders.
05:08They have, there's been a lot of sort of,
05:10even nuclear waste has been there,
05:12and they dropped a hydrogen bomb there accidentally
05:17in the 50s, which led to a lot of pollution
05:19and people were forced out of the land.
05:21So the Americans have actually not really made,
05:25have not really acted in a way
05:28that would be beneficial to the Greenlanders,
05:32and those things that happened in the 50s
05:34have cast a long shadow over the relationship.
05:37So a lot of people in Greenland, and for good reason,
05:40have been upset with the Americans.
05:42And what are the main political parties then saying
05:45about Donald Trump's approach to Greenland?
05:49And also, what are they saying
05:50about independence from Denmark?
05:53You're talking about a referendum there.
05:55Would that be inevitable at this stage?
05:57And what happens then, Matt,
05:59if people do vote to become independent from Denmark?
06:03How long would that actually take?
06:04What would the challenges be?
06:06The challenges will be that they would have to set up
06:09a whole new system, but that has happened
06:11on a number of occasions before.
06:12Iceland became independent less than 100 years ago,
06:15also independent from Denmark.
06:18Norway, of course, a little over 100 years ago,
06:21became independent from Sweden,
06:22and there was a phase-in period of that,
06:25when Iceland is probably the better example
06:28we can compare it to,
06:29because Iceland didn't have a university at first,
06:32and then they had an agreement with Denmark
06:33that people, if they wanted to become dentists,
06:36they would go to Copenhagen,
06:37and until recently they could do that.
06:39So the process of becoming an independent country
06:42can take quite a long time.
06:45I think what will happen if there is a referendum
06:47is that there will be a period of time
06:49before we get to that referendum.
06:51There will have to be an agreement about that referendum
06:54who will be able to vote in it.
06:55At the moment, it looks as if anybody
06:57who's lived in Greenland for six months or so,
07:01even if they're originally from Denmark, can vote there,
07:04but some issues have been raised over that.
07:09I think what the people in Greenland ideally would like,
07:13and I hear that from people I've spoken to in Greenland,
07:17is that they would like an independent Greenland
07:20in a united Europe.
07:21They will be turning towards the European Union.
07:24Currently, and interestingly,
07:26Greenland is not a member of the European Union.
07:29They're part of Denmark,
07:30but they're not part of the European Union.
07:32So actually, the first kind of exit
07:35from what was then the European community
07:38was happening in the early 1980s.
07:40Before that time, Greenland had been a county within Denmark.
07:44Then they got devolution,
07:46a little bit along the lines of what Scotland has today,
07:49and then they used that provisions for devolution
07:53to actually vote to leave the European communities,
07:59as it was then, but they became the European Union.
08:02So Greenland is what will happen after the election.
08:08I expect that the same government will probably continue.
08:11That will be a government that is,
08:13to different degrees, committed to independence.
08:18They will then start a process of negotiating with Denmark,
08:22but also negotiating with the European Union.
08:26A lot of people in the European Union
08:28are very interested in that,
08:30and they will probably be in pole position,
08:33especially, certainly, more popular than the Americans.
08:37So I think there is a relatively good chance
08:40that within some years,
08:42we will see an independent Greenland in a United Europe.
08:45And Matt, is there consensus at all
08:48about how to approach the relationship with the US then?
08:50Would people there be open to a deal, for example,
08:53on minerals exploration?
08:55And how worried are they by what they're hearing
08:58coming from Donald Trump
08:59about not ruling out using force, potentially?
09:03That, of course, is an outrage,
09:05and that Donald Trump is effectively behaving
09:08like Saddam Hussein was with Habib Kuwait
09:11is the thing that beggars belief.
09:13And if you are at the receiving end of that,
09:17that is incredibly scary,
09:18and people are very, very scared of that.
09:21People I've spoken to in Greenland are saying
09:25it is a completely surreal and absurd and crazy position
09:30that they've found themselves in.
09:31A lot of people in Greenland
09:33have probably suffered in many ways.
09:37In some ways, a bit like some of the islands in the Pacific
09:42where France tested their nuclear bombs.
09:45A little bit the same has happened in Greenland.
09:47The people in Greenland do not want,
09:49in any way, shape or form, to be Americans.
09:53The people in Greenland are very much on the left.
09:56The Inuit Atacatanit Party is a party
09:59which is politically a bit like Mélenchon in France.
10:03It is a party on the far left.
10:06People in Greenland are very liberal,
10:09to use an American expression,
10:11and they do not have the same belief system
10:14as the Americans have.
10:16So they really do not want to become Americans.
10:19They want to be, they want to have a welfare state,
10:24probably even like a social democratic,
10:26a left social democratic welfare state.
10:29And the ideology of the people in Greenland
10:32is completely opposite everything
10:35that people have in America.
10:37So people in Greenland have a different way
10:40of looking at things than they have in America.
10:43They are on the left,
10:45and most Americans are probably on the right.
10:47Matt, we'll have to leave it there for now.
10:49We're out of time on that,
10:51but thanks so much for being with us this evening.
10:53That's Matt Kvortrup,
10:54he's Senior Research Fellow
10:55at the Centre for European Studies
10:57at the Australian National University.
11:00Well, that's it from us for now.