President Donald Trump’s explicit threats to take Greenland "the easy way or the hard way" have marked an unprecedented break in transatlantic language. For the first time since the European Union’s founding, a member state is facing territorial pressure coming from a NATO ally.
Military contingents from France, Germany, Sweden and other European countries have been deployed to Greenland with symbolic and deterrent functions, signalling a direct European presence on the ground. In parallel, Denmark has strengthened its own military posture on the island and publicly recalled the existence of a 1952 self-defence rule requiring the armed forces to respond immediately to an armed invasion without waiting for political orders.
At the institutional level, the political leaders of the European Parliament adopted a statement of "unequivocal support" for Greenland and Denmark, describing the US statements as a challenge to international law, the UN Charter, and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a NATO ally. The call for "concrete and tangible" support effectively provides advance political cover for a coordinated European response, explicitly lowering its political cost.
In this context, NATO’s Article 5 appears paralysed by the prospect of an internal conflict within the Alliance, while Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union emerges as the only mutual-defence instrument that can realistically be activated. Taken together, military postures, legal framing and political signals suggest the EU is preparing the ground for a scenario that breaks one of the founding taboos of the Western order.
Is the EU truly ready, politically and strategically, to activate Article 42.7 in defence of a member state against the threat posed by a Western ally, effectively marking the end of the transatlantic pact as it was conceived and opening a new phase of European strategic autonomy?