The Greenland Effect
With Germany at the forefront, the European Union has rejected the U.S. call for military intervention to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which has become Iran’s key leverage in the war. Transatlantic relations are cooling.
Greenland has everything to do with it. Big changes are looming in Europe’s security policy. Here’s a possible scenario: a forthcoming redefinition of the EU’s Mutual Defense Clause, which is Article 42.7 of the Lisbon Treaty.
As a review of 50 press articles regarding the legal instrument suggests, Donald Trump’s ambition to get Greenland is reshaping media narratives around the EU’s mutual defense. Originally conceived as complementary to NATO’s defense clause, Article 42.7 is now being framed as an alternative.
From the 50 articles published between 2022 and 2025 in newspapers from EU countries and pan-European media, 32 present the clause as an alternative to NATO’s well-known Article 5. This tendency didn’t exist before Trump’s remarks on the Danish island, not even after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. As such, the Greenland Effect is changing the media representation of the clause like no other contemporary issue has done so far.
As former Prime Minister of Belgium Guy Verhofstadt wrote in his latest Politico column, “Trump is just what Europe’s defense needs.”
New Discourse, New Decisions
Print media is still important in molding public opinion, despite the polarizing influence of social networks. Favorable public opinion creates momentum, stimulating commitment on previously stalled issues. The early Cold War atmosphere that permitted NATO’s creation in 1949 is a pertinent example. Under a concerted press validation, Western citizens adopted a formerly unthinkable support for military cooperation.
Studying new media narratives helps to anticipate these perception changes, which in turn inform new government policies. In this context, the new framing of Article 42.7 of the Lisbon Treaty can be partially explained by the shifts happening in the EU’s defense culture. According to the latest Eurobarometer, 81 percent of EU citizens supports a stronger Common Security and Defense Policy, the highest since 2004.
The same survey shows that 85 percent of respondents seek more defense cooperation for their countries at the supranational level. This represents an anomaly to the trend of greater support for national sovereignty over bloc integration.
Along with the stats, we can see this tendency in the mentioned new media framing coming out of the EU, especially after Trump’s statements on Greenland. A new perception for the instrument came to the agenda.
Comparing Mutual Defense Provisions
NATO’s defense clause determines that an attack to a member “shall be considered an attack against them all.” In contrast, if an armed aggression is confirmed, the EU’s defense clause establishes that all 27 members have an obligation to assist the attacked country “by all the means in their power.”
At first sight, the EU clause carries more binding legal language. But this doesn’t reflect reality for two reasons. Article 42.7, in its second paragraph, considers NATO to be the “foundation” of EU collective defense, thereby reducing the clause to a complement. Second, EU military power by itself is not enough to deter superpowers like Russia or China.
Despite all that, the Greenland Effect is producing media changes in favor of the EU clause—and policy change as well. In early 2025, the EU military committee urged a strengthening and better operationalization of the collective security mechanism. The committee argues that bloc’s defense policies must transcend the crisis-management focus. For that to happen, Article 42.7 has to get “beefed up.”
Redefining Mutual Defense
At the moment, Article 42.7 does not represent a real alternative to NATO’s Article 5. But the organization faces a near unprecedented situation where a NATO country has threatened to occupy another NATO country. This happened once before with Turkey and Greece over Cyprus, but this is even worse for the organization’s cohesion and credibility because it directly involves the United States, which is the biggest source of NATO’s deterrent power.
Despite the strength asymmetries, the European press has started to push Article 42.7 as an alternative, with each journal using their own framing strategies. Some media like the Luxemburger Wort, Agenzia Giornalistica Italiana, and România Liberă, embellish the clause by using phrases like “it is a necessary shield that is getting more and more attractive” or “it is the legal framework for difficult times.”
Others, like the French Le Monde prefer a direct attack on NATO. “The original sin of EU defense,” stated the historian Jenny Raflik in her column. The German Die Zeit and the Danish Politiken suggest an intriguing yet very complicated idea: using an amplified interpretation of art 42.7 so that France—the only country to invoke the article so far—could empower the clause by providing its nuclear umbrella for the 27 members.
Paneuropeans such as Euronews and Euractiv, which previously were faithful North Atlantic alliance supporters, published several pieces enhancing the EU defense clause over its counterpart and amplifying negative reactions from politicians to Trump’s foreign policy, like French spokeswoman Sophie Primas, who classified U.S. behavior as “a form of imperialism.” Another widely reproduced statement was the one made by former EU Military Committee Chairman, Robert Brieger, who assured that making “believable steps” regarding the operability of Article 42.7 will determine whether the EU is just a “payer” or a true “player.”
Overall, during the two months of Trump’s discursive escalation from January to February of 2025, the apparatus went into protective mode.
Anatomy of the Greenland Effect
As an autonomous territory, Greenland left the EU’s predecessor, the European Community, in 1985. So, the purpose of the EU’s agenda setting was to remind the world that, despite the island’s lack of membership, a forced annexation could still trigger the EU clause anyway because Greenland is part of Denmark.
Further events shaped the debate: the Russian airspace intrusion into Poland, Trump’s tax escalation days before the 2026 Davos meeting, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s explicit call to “bring European Mutual Defense Clause to life” at the 2026 Munich Security Conference, and, finally, the Iranian missile that landed on Cyprus. A flurry of new press articles pushed for the need for the consolidation of Article 42.7.
Still, NATO’s clause will not soon be replaced. The benefits of being under U.S. protection are simply too good to relinquish, particularly given that the United States represents 40 percent of global military spending. The momentum gained for Article 42.7 will probably produce instead a redefinition for use in the event of new hybrid threats.
The only real dealbreaker is the incident that started it all: Greenland.
After Europe’s refusal to assist him with the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. president anticipated a “bad future” for NATO. Needless to say, the phrasing is volatile. But if the Iran war cannot be sold as a victory, then the existential threat to NATO posed by Trump’s threat to seize the Danish island will return. Only the U.S. midterm elections might serve as a constraint on executive action
