Greenland has signed a lucrative minerals deal with Europe in the wake of Donald Trump‘s insistence that the US should acquire the Arctic territory.
The deal will allow Danish-French consortium Greenland Anorthosite Mining (GAM) to mine anorthosite.
GAM was granted a 30-year permit to extract the mineral, which is key to the production of aluminium, Reuters reports.
The agreement comes after months of Trump saying the US should acquire the autonomous Danish territory.
But Greenland’s Mineral Resources Minister Naaja Nathanielsen said that despite the American rhetoric, there has been no actual investment from them. She said the deal shows that business negotiations with Europe were progressing more quickly.
Nathanielsen said that despite all of Trump’s words, and private US business delegations visiting Greenland, there has been no formal dialogue with the US government had started.
This week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the president was still keen on making the resource-rich territory part of the US.
She told reporters that Trump “remains committed to the idea of obtaining Greenland in whatever means we can to advance our national security interests in the region.”
Earlier this year, Greenland’s political parties united in a joint statement to reject any suggestions from Trump that the US should control the territory.
This was followed by locals giving vice-president JD Vance a very public cold shoulder during his visit to Greenland, which ended up being curtailed.
Denmark has also firmly rejected any suggestion of America moving in to take control of the region.