Prime Minister gets bruised after confronting Trump over Greenland issue

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen suffered a setback in the election after her left-wing party appeared unable to win enough votes to form a government after the campaign was clouded by US President Donald Trump’s threat to annex Greenland.

Results released early Wednesday showed that Frederiksen’s Social Democratic Party is expected to have won the most votes, winning 38 seats in Denmark’s 179-member parliament, compared with 50 four years ago. According to reports, this was the party’s worst election result since 1903.

The left-wing group (the “red bloc”) won 84 seats, six short of the 90 needed for a majority, while the right-wing group (the “blue bloc”) secured 77 seats.

Denmark’s Frederiksen told supporters in Copenhagen that forming a government would be “difficult” and sought to downplay the decline in his party’s popularity due to repeated external shocks.

“We’ve had to deal with wars, we’ve had threats from the president of the United States, but economic growth has fallen by 4 percentage points over the last seven years or so, and I think that’s OK,” Frederiksen said, according to Reuters.

The election results set the stage for tough coalition negotiations over the next few weeks, with Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen’s moderate centre-right bloc, which won 14 seats, expected to emerge as the kingmaker.

“We stand in the middle. Don’t sprint to the corner flag. We stand in the middle. That’s what’s interesting about the game. Come and play with us,” Rasmussen said, according to a CNBC translation.

The prime minister had called the dissolution vote months earlier than expected, aiming to secure a third consecutive term and capitalize on public support, against pressure from President Donald Trump to seize control of Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark.

During election campaigns, political parties in Scandinavia focused primarily on domestic issues such as the economic situation, clean drinking water, and the price of food and fuel.

In contrast, Greenland’s future was less salient, given the widespread agreement that existed regarding its place in the kingdom.

Copenhagen’s position on the fate of Greenland and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had “no impact whatsoever” on the election outcome, said Lucke Frith, director of the Danish think tank Europe.

“The core issues – drinking water and animal welfare – are not very good issues for the Social Democrats,” Frith told CNBC’s “Early Edition of Europe” on Wednesday.

“I also think you need to remember, Mette Frederiksen, that although she is hurt, winning three elections in a row is actually quite impressive. That doesn’t happen very often in European politics,” she added.

Greenland was thrust into the center of a geopolitical storm at the beginning of the year when the US president, who had long claimed control of Greenland, renewed his interest in the region.

President Trump said at the time that the island was critical to U.S. national security and frequently cited concerns about Russia and China’s influence in the Arctic.

The issue has heightened tensions across the Atlantic and shaken the NATO military alliance, with Denmark’s Frederiksen warning that the world order as we know it is over.

President Trump finally calmed tensions over his desire to make Greenland part of the United States, saying at the World Economic Forum in late January that he had reached a “framework for a future agreement” that considers U.S. interests over the long term.

Still, Greenland Prime Minister Jens Frederik Nielsen called the vote the most important in the island’s history and said the region remained in a “serious situation.”

“We are in an era where the superpowers are trying to buy us, take us away and control us,” Nielsen told AFP on Monday.