Emergency meeting in the EU on Sunday after Trump's threats / The latest statements of the European leaders

Ambassadors from the European Union's 27 countries are meeting urgently on Sunday after US President Donald Trump announced he would slap ever-increasing tariffs on European allies until the United States can buy Greenland.

The emergency meeting was called by Cyprus, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU, and the meeting will take place starting at 18:00 (Romanian time), according to Reuters.

Hours before the meeting, the Dutch foreign minister said Trump's threat to impose new tariffs on Europeans was “blackmail”. “What he's doing is blackmail… and it's not necessary. It doesn't help the alliance (NATO) and it doesn't help Greenland,” David van Weel said in an interview with Dutch television.

Trump's threat to impose tariffs on several European countries is “turning friends into enemies”, Deputy Speaker of the Danish Parliament, Lars-Christian Brask, told the BBC.

Trump “is not acting in the interests of his own country”, he said, adding that the relationship between the US and the EU has become “increasingly strained” and the US president's latest plans “appear to be economic blackmail”.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said imposing taxes “on allies for pursuing the collective security of NATO allies is completely wrong”, and French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron called the threat “unacceptable”.

“A dangerous downward spiral”

EU leaders warned on Saturday after Trump's announcement that there was a risk of a “dangerous downward spiral” in the relationship with the United States.

“Taxes would undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral. Europe will remain united, coordinated and committed to defending its sovereignty,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU Council President Antonio Costa said.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas also warned that the increased tariffs were hurting prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic, while distracting the EU from its “primary task” of ending Russia's war in Ukraine.

“China and Russia are probably having a great time. They are the ones benefiting from the divisions between the allies,” Kallas wrote on the X social network.

Moscow responded, through Putin's special envoy Kiril Dmitriev, with disparaging messages for the EU's most powerful women.

“Don't provoke Daddy,” he told von der Leyen, and Kajei Kallas told him, “You better not drink before you fast.”

A leading voice in Europe, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, warned in an interview published Sunday morning that the worst-case scenario for Greenland, that of a forcible takeover by the United States, “would make Putin the happiest man on Earth.”

Photo: Symbiote | Dreamstime.com