New Danish government to stand firm over Greenland

Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has put the future of Greenland at the top of her political agenda after ending months of uncertainty by securing a center-left coalition to govern the country.

Her Social Democratic Party won 21.9 percent of the vote and 38 parliamentary seats in the March election, leaving it with the most votes but well short of the 90 seats needed for a majority.

After two months of negotiations, she has reached a deal with the Socialist People's Party, the center-left Radikale Venstre and the centrist Moderates, which will allow her to have a third term in office, and addressing the United States' designs on the Danish overseas territory will be one of her priorities.

US President Donald Trump first expressed a territorial interest in Greenland during his first term of office, and in December 2024, after his reelection, he said "the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity".

He suggested that he might want to buy the world's largest island, which is strategically important and believed to have vast mineral deposits. He repeated his interest at the start of the year, saying the US would take over the island "one way or the other".

The issue was a dominant theme in the election campaign, with the threat credited with a pre-polling surge in support for the Social Democrats after they put on a poor performance in local elections at the end of last year, and helping keep Frederiksen in office.

Carolin Hjort Rapp, a political scientist from the University of Copenhagen, told media that the Greenland crisis had played a role in keeping Frederiksen, and also Moderates leader Lars Lokke Rasmussen, in position when voters may otherwise have had reservations about their performance.

"They kind of survived, but at the same time, the voters were not satisfied with what the government had been doing before, so they wanted to move to other parties," she said. "You see smaller parties (of the left and far right) that gained way more votes than before."

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