US official says Greenland agreement to be signed on Tuesday

21.09.2026, dpa

Photo: Ben Birchall/PA Wire/dpa

The United States, Denmark and Greenland are set to sign an agreement on Tuesday regarding the dispute over the strategically important Arctic island, US officials have told dpa. 

President Donald Trump is due to meet with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen to formalize the new agreement, the White House official said on Monday. 

The arrangement which is intended to guarantee and defend the security of both Greenland and the US, the official said.

The US official did not specify a time or a specific location for the signing. However, it is expected to take place on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, where Trump is due to deliver a speech on Tuesday.

A few days ago, the US, Denmark and Greenland unexpectedly announced a breakthrough in the dispute over the island. Exactly what had been agreed remained unclear at first. 

According to Trump, the agreement secures the US far-reaching powers and control over the Arctic island, which, although largely autonomous, is part of Danish territory.

Neither the Danish nor the Greenlandic side has so far confirmed Trump's account in these terms.

Trump threatened to annex Greenland on several occasions in the past - thereby not only snubbing NATO partner Denmark, but also raising doubts about the unity of the Western military alliance.

Trump justified his proposal on the grounds of US security interests, arguing that enemies of the US, such as China and Russia, were seeking to bring the island under their control - and that Denmark was powerless to prevent it.

(c) 2026 dpa Deutsche Presse Agentur GmbH

US, Denmark and Greenland to sign security deal on Tuesday

The United States, Denmark and Greenland are set to sign a security agreement Tuesday expanding US involvement in Greenland’s defense while affirming Danish sovereignty over the Arctic territory.


Issued on: 22/09/2026 
By: FRANCE 24

This photograph shows a Danish military frigate docked in the port of Nuuk, Greenland, on February 26, 2026. © Florent Vergnes, AFP


The United States, Denmark and Greenland will on Tuesday sign the announced US security deal for Greenland on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, Denmark's government said.

US President Donald Trump said last Friday that the arrangement will give America "permanent control" over security for Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory in the Arctic that he has long coveted.

The office of Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said that she, Trump and Greenland's Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen would sign the deal at 1430 GMT in the UN building in New York.

Frederiksen said Monday that the agreement, which has not been published, "recognises" the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark, as well as the right of the Greenlandic people to self-determination.


"It is a good agreement from a Danish point of view," she told Danish radio DR from New York.

"And when it benefits the Nordic countries and security in the Arctic region, it also benefits NATO and Europe."

Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump has repeatedly insisted that the United States needs to control Greenland for strategic reasons, alarming NATO ally Denmark and sparking fierce pushback from the alliance.

According to Washington, the agreement ensures that China and Russia will not be able to establish military bases in Greenland or carry out sensitive investments there without its consent.

"This is something we have agreed on with the Americans for a very, very long time: the Arctic region, the North Atlantic, constitute an important defence zone for all members of the NATO alliance," Frederiksen said.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Greenland Deal: Greenland: A Trump Win or Danish Masterclass?

Cover image: SPOTLIGHT © FRANCE 24

Issued on: 19/09/2026 - 

FRANCE24
15:20 min From the show 

Is there a resolution on Greenland? President Trump’s pressure campaign began in December 2024, right after he won re-election, when he began talking about the need for US ownership and control of the semi-autonomous Danish territory.

“It was absolutely necessary,” he said. By early 2025, in his State of the Union address, he said the US would get Greenland “one way or another,” citing what he described as the scale of the security challenge it posed to the world.

This led to frantic diplomacy and concerns about the very real prospect of one NATO country considering the invasion of another. To the extent that several European militaries deployed a multinational naval mission to Greenland, ostensibly to assess the level of security and the threat posed by outside actors.

OUR GUEST

Lars Christsian BRASK 

Danish MP in the centre right Liberal Alliance party

BY:

Gavin LEE

Daniel Whittington

Guillaume GOUGEON

Antonia Cimini

ICE, Trump and Africa: Secret deals, broken lives

Cover image: Reporters: ICE, Trump and Africa: Secret deals, broken lives 

© Studio graphique FMM

44.03

Issued on: 21/09/2026 
44:07 min From the show

For this edition of Reporters+, Karina Chabour investigated the dark side of US President Donald Trump’s immigration policy: How ICE deports immigrants to so-called third countries in Africa, far from the United States and often far from their countries of origin.


Most of the people deported have been living in the US for decades. They worked, paid taxes and many even have families who were left behind. Without notice, they were arrested, detained and then deported to Ghana and Eswatini: countries they don’t know and where they have no relatives, no income and no legal status.

Our reporter met individuals who now live in limbo: without papers and sometimes detained, at risk of being sent back to the very country they fled, many fearing for their lives.

Cover image: Sofia Alvarez Jurado, Forbidden Stories, Paris, September 21, 2026. © Screengrab
09:59

The Deportation Project: behind the investigation on Trump administration’s mass deportations

As part of a consortium of 26 media outlets coordinated by Forbidden Stories, RFI and FRANCE 24 spent six months investigating the secret deals struck between the administration of US President Donald Trump and several African countries. These “third countries” have agreed to host undocumented migrants detained by ICE and deported from the US.

From Ghana to Cameroon and Eswatini, our journalists spoke to the people deported to countries utterly unfamiliar to them.

Lives in limbo and US pressure on African states

Behind the broken lives of the deported, the film reveals a dark system put in place by Washington. To secure agreements with African states, the US piles on the pressure: political and financial deals, discreet bargaining, or trade and tariff incentives.

READ MORE‘Waiting for us to crack’: In Cameroon, the victims of Trump’s deportations face uncertain fates

“ICE, Trump and Africa – Secret deals, broken lives” reveals how the US is relocating deportations: how secret deals are being carried out by the Trump administration, using human lives as a negotiating tool.

With the collaboration of Caroline Dumay, Olivia Bizot, Simon Martin and Marine Pradel.

The Deportation Project: our full coverage


Deported to Africa: An international investigation into Trump’s migrant policy

‘Waiting for us to crack’: In Cameroon, the victims of Trump’s deportations face uncertain fates

Reporters +: 'ICE, Trump and Africa - Secret deals, broken lives'

Interactive map: Third-country removals - Trump’s deportation policy by the numbers

Scrollytelling: Flight to Ghana - Expelled From the US to a Country They’d Never Been to (coming soon)

‘I had never heard of Eswatini’: Deported to a country that rejects them (coming soon)
BY:

Karina CHABOUR

'Banking on a national brand': Bolsonaro sons Carlos, Jair Renan run for power in Brazil's south

Report from Santa Catarina, Brazil – Flavio Bolsonaro is not the only member of his family campaigning in his father’s shadow. The former president's eldest son, who is now polling neck and neck with incumbent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, can count on two of his brothers, who are standing in the senatorial and legislative elections. In Santa Catarina, one of Brazil’s most pro-Bolsonaro southern states, their surname alone is enough to secure victory.

ON THE GROUND
Issued on: 21/09/2026 -
FRANCE24
By: Fanny LOTHAIRE

Former president Jair Bolsonaro, centre, waves to the crowd alongside his sons Jair Renan Bolsonaro (left) and Carlos Bolsonaro (second right), during a demonstration against his trial at the Court of Justice of the Republic, São Paulo, Sunday, June 29, 2025. © Ettore Chiereguini, AP


They waited for them for hours in the rain and cold of this seemingly endless winter in Joinville, Santa Catarina state. In this exhibition centre that once hosted the country’s largest arms fair before falling victim to its own success and being moved to São Paulo, the campaigners can hardly believe their eyes.

On this particular day, it must be said that the Bolsonaro family’s supporters are spoiled with choice: there are not one, but two Bolsonaros onstage. The eldest son, Flavio – nominated by his father Jair as the Liberal Party’s candidate for the presidential election – is accompanied by his brother, Carlos, 43 years old, who is standing for the Senate. “Why is your state exemplary? Because it has never been ruled by the Workers’ Party!” chants Flavio, rallying the crowd to vote for his younger brother, who is trying his luck in a senate run for the first time in this southern region.

A low-key ‘number 3’

A Rio de Janeiro city councillor for over 20 years, Carlos – known as "Number 3" – is a true Carioca who has parachuted into Santa Catarina. Regularly mocked for his exaggerated "ch" sounds typical of the capital city, he moved to the south just a few months ago – drawn by “the honesty of its hard-working, conservative people”, as he regularly asserts at rallies – and is standing for a senate seat that would be far harder to secure in the tourist capital, where the political landscape is far too competitive.

That day in Joinville, Carlos Bolsonaro’s running mate Carol de Toni drew on his experience as as a city councillor. "He helped run a city like Rio, so for our far safer and less chaotic state, it is a godsend! ... We are a hard-working, conservative people who uphold the values that Jair Bolsonaro stood for." It was as if the aura of his father – sentenced to 27 years in prison for attempting a coup and barred from taking part in the campaign – were projected into the son’s body.

Cover image: © France 24
01:38

“I’m very religious; I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s a bit like the Holy Spirit, but there’s a bit of that to it. Jair Bolsonaro is a hero to us all. So if he can be a little bit with us through his sons, what a chance!” says de Toni. Indeed, the portrait of the former president, like a talisman, takes pride of place at every campaign stop.

Behind Flavio, Carlos takes a back seat. Even in his older brother’s absence, his media appearances are few. At campaign headquarters, they point out that “the Bolsonaro candidates’ schedules are not disclosed for security reasons”.

For Felipe Pereira, a journalist with the regional UOL outlet, this is above all a campaign strategy: “Staying silent in the face of the national media and pouring everything out on their social media is an explicit request from Jair Bolsonaro.” Carlos's arena is therefore not the campaign stage, but the telephone.

Although considered less charismatic than his father or two elder brothers, he speaks directly to supporters over the phone, bypassing the mainstream media and fostering a relationship of mistrust towards institutions among the Bolsonarist grassroots.

The south? A strategic choice

In Santa Catarina, where nearly 70 percent voted for Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential elections, this approach has found a loyal following. Messages circulate in family and work WhatsApp groups. A TikTok video criticising Lula, the Supreme Court or the government’s environmental policies can be shared within minutes.

Joao Feres, a political scientist specialising in Bolsonarism at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, explains why this shift towards the south is strategic: “The family is banking on a national brand: these are candidates with no real local roots, who rely on the Bolsonaro name to compensate for their lack of connection to the region.”

The campaign is organised less around a programme than around a carefully chosen political community: a conservative south made up of large agricultural estates which identifies with the flag, belief in God, the values of hard work and entrepreneurship – and above all, viscerally rejects left-wing social policies.

Cover image: © France 24
02:06

Jair Renan, the youngest son in the running

Balneário Camboriú, nicknamed the "Brazilian Dubai", is an hour’s drive from the capital of Santa Catarina. The seaside resort, home to the tallest skyscrapers in Latin America, thrives mainly on money from agribusiness. It's an audience that has already been won over to the cause of Jair the father. Jair, the son, therefore feels right at home.

Having come to study law at the Avantis University Centre, Jair Renan Bolsonaro, the youngest of the siblings, was baptised at the Evangelical church there and then elected as a councillor with a record number of votes three years ago. His niche? Speaking to young people.

At his campaign headquarters dotted with photos of both father and son, supporters even joke about their physical resemblance and insist that he is “the best candidate in the state, a promising young man” who “keeps his father’s legacy alive, now that his father is no longer allowed to speak out”.

Yet Jair Renan rarely takes the floor at council meetings, and when he speaks on social media, his tone and rhetoric seem scripted. Last April, he delivered a rambling speech on Brazil's military dictatorship, referring to older elected representatives for whom "it was Brazil’s golden age".

Can Bolsonarism survive Jair Bolsonaro?

Opposite the party headquarters, barber Eduardo Souza has had requests for "Renan-style haircuts". He says this with a smile, but it quickly turns into a grimace. "He can ride on the coat-tails of his father’s surname and even his first name, but he is the only one who could really save our country from the communist Lula."

Cover image: Jan Onoszko REUTERS - Alexandre Meneghini
01:33



This is line with Feres's analysis. “Moderating one’s stance dilutes the brand; radicalising it preserves it, but limits the electoral ceiling.” He urges caution regarding the idea of an automatic legacy: “Jair Bolsonaro’s political capital is not passed on by inheritance,” he argues. Jair Bolsonaro's sons bear the family name and, with it, “access to an established electorate”, but none of them has yet established “a leadership of their own that can stand on its own, without reference to their father”.

Behind the flags and slogans, one question is beginning to take centre stage: can Bolsonarism survive Jair Bolsonaro, without remaining trapped in his shadow?