5 TIMES THE WINTER OLYMPICS GOT SUPER POLITICAL Invasions, nuclear crises and Nazi propaganda: The Games have seen it all. By SEBASTIAN STARCEVIC Illustration by Natália Delgado /POLITICO The Winter Olympics return to Europe this week, with Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo set to host the world’s greatest athletes against the snowy backdrop of the Italian Alps. But beyond the ice rinks and ski runs, the Games have long doubled as a stage for global alliances, heated political rivalries and diplomatic crises.  “An event like the Olympics is inherently political because it is effectively a competition between nations,” said Madrid’s IE Assistant Professor Andrew Bertoli, who studies the intersection of sport and politics. “So the Games can effectively become an arena where nations compete for prestige, respect and soft power.” If history is any guide, this time won’t be any different. From invasions to the Nazis to nuclear crises, here are five times politics and the Winter Olympics collided. 1980: AMERICA’S “MIRACLE ON ICE” One of the most iconic moments in Olympic history came about amid a resurgence in Cold War tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The USSR had invaded Afghanistan only months earlier, and Washington’s rhetoric toward Moscow had hardened, with Ronald Reagan storming to the presidency a month prior on an aggressive anti-Soviet platform. At the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York, that superpower rivalry was on full display on the ice. The U.S. men’s ice hockey team — made up largely of college players and amateurs — faced off against the Soviet squad, a battle-hardened, gold medal-winning machine. The Americans weren’t supposed to stand a chance. Then the impossible happened. In a stunning upset, the U.S. team skated to a 4-3 victory, a win that helped them clinch the gold medal. As the final seconds ticked away, ABC broadcaster Al Michaels famously cried, “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” The impact echoed far beyond the rink. For many Americans, the victory was a morale boost in a period marked by geopolitical anxiety and division. Reagan later said it was proof “nice guys in a tough world can finish first.” The miracle’s legacy has endured well into the 21st century, with U.S. President Donald Trump awarding members of the hockey team the Congressional Gold Medal in December last year. 2014: RUSSIA INVADES CRIMEA AFTER SOCHI Four days. That’s how long Moscow waited after hosting the Winter Olympics in the Russian resort city of Sochi before sending troops into Crimea, occupying and annexing the Ukrainian peninsula. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych had fled to Moscow days earlier, ousted by protesters demanding democracy and closer integration with the EU. As demonstrators filled Kyiv’s Independence Square, their clashes with government forces played on television screens around the world alongside highlights from the Games, in which Russia dominated the medal tally. Vladimir Putin poses with Russian athletes while visiting the Coastal Cluster Olympic Village ahead of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. | Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images No sooner was the Olympic flame extinguished in Sochi on Feb. 23 than on Feb. 27 trucks and tanks rolled into Crimea. Soldiers in unmarked uniforms set up roadblocks, stormed Crimean government buildings and raised the Russian flag high above them. Later that year, Moscow would face allegations of a state-sponsored doping program and many of its athletes were ultimately stripped of their gold medals. 2022: RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE … AGAIN There’s a theme here. Russian President Vladimir Putin made an appearance at the opening ceremony of Beijing’s Winter Games in 2022, meeting on the sidelines with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping and declaring a “no limits” partnership. Four days after the end of the Games, on Feb. 24, Putin announced a “special military operation,” declaring war on Ukraine. Within minutes, Russian troops flooded into Ukraine, and missiles rained down on Kyiv, Kharkiv and other cities across the country. According to U.S. intelligence, The New York Times reported, Chinese officials asked the Kremlin to delay launching its attack until after the Games had wrapped up. Beijing denied it had advance knowledge of the invasion. 2018: KOREAN UNITY ON DISPLAY As South Korea prepared to host the Winter Games in its mountainous Pyeongchang region, just a few hundred kilometers over the border, the North Koreans were conducting nuclear missile tests, sparking global alarm and leading U.S. President Donald Trump to threaten to strike the country. The IOC said it was “closely monitoring” the situation amid concerns about whether the Games could be held safely on the peninsula. South Korean Vice Unification Minister Chun Hae-Sung, shakes hands with the head of North Korean delegation Jon Jong-Su after their meeting on January 17, 2018 in Panmunjom, South Korea. | South Korean Unification Ministry via Getty Images But then in his New Year’s address, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un signaled openness to participating in the Winter Olympics. In the end, North Korean athletes not only participated in the Games, but at the opening ceremony they marched with their South Korean counterparts under a single flag, that of a unified Korea. Pyongyang and Seoul also joined forces in women’s ice hockey, sending a single team to compete — another rare show of unity that helped restart diplomatic talks between the capitals, though tensions ultimately resumed after the Games and continue to this day. 1936: HITLER INVADES THE RHINELAND Much has been said about the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, in which the Nazi regime barred Jewish athletes from participating and used the Games to spread propaganda. But a few months earlier Germany also hosted the Winter Olympics in the town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, allowing the Nazis to project an image of a peaceful, prosperous Germany and restore its global standing nearly two decades after World War I. A famous photograph from the event even shows Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels signing autographs for the Canadian figure skating team. Weeks after the Games ended, Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland, a major violation of the Treaty of Versailles that was met with little pushback from France and Britain, and which some historians argue emboldened the Nazis to eventually invade Poland, triggering World War II.

BRUSSELS ― European governments and corporations are racing to reduce their exposure to U.S. technology, military hardware and energy resources as transatlantic relations sour.  For decades, the EU relied on NATO guarantees to ensure security in the bloc, and on American technology to power its business. Donald Trump’s threats to take over Greenland, and aggressive comments about Europe by members of his administration, have given fresh impetus to European leaders’ call for “independence.” “If we want to be taken seriously again, we will have to learn the language of power politics,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said last week. From orders banning civil servants from using U.S.-based videoconferencing tools to trade deals with countries like India to a push to diversify Europe’s energy suppliers, efforts to minimize European dependence on the U.S. are gathering pace. EU leaders warn that transatlantic relations are unlikely to return to the pre-Trump status quo. EU officials stress that such measures amount to “de-risking” Europe’s relationship with the U.S., rather than “decoupling” — a term that implies a clean break in economic and strategic ties. Until recently, both expressions were mainly applied to European efforts to reduce dependence on China. Now, they are coming up in relation to the U.S., Europe’s main trade partner and security benefactor. The decoupling drive is in its infancy. The U.S. remains by far the largest trading partner for Europe, and it will take years for the bloc to wean itself off American tech and military support, according to Jean-Luc Demarty, who was in charge of the European Commission’s trade department under the body’s former president, Jean-Claude Juncker. Donald Trump’s threats to take over Greenland, and aggressive comments about Europe by members of his administration, have given fresh impetus to European leaders’ call for “independence.” | Kristian Tuxen Ladegaard Berg/NurPhoto via Getty Images “In terms of trade, they [the U.S.] represent a significant share of our exports,” said Demarty. “So it’s a lot, but it’s not a matter of life and death.” The push to diversify away from the U.S. has seen Brussels strike trade deals with the Mercosur bloc of Latin American countries, India and Indonesia in recent months. The Commission also revamped its deal with Mexico, and revived stalled negotiations with Australia. DEFENDING EUROPE: FROM NATO TO THE EU Since the continent emerged from the ashes of World War II, Europe has relied for its security on NATO — which the U.S. contributes the bulk of funding to. At a weekend retreat in Zagreb, Croatia, conservative European leaders including Merz said it was time for the bloc to beef up its homegrown mutual-defense clause, which binds EU countries to an agreement to defend any EU country that comes under attack. While it has existed since 2009, the EU’s Article 42.7 mutual defense clause was rarely seen as necessary because NATO’s Article 5 served a similar purpose. But Europe’s governments have started to doubt whether the U.S. really would come to Europe’s rescue. In Zagreb, the leaders embraced the EU’s new role as a security actor, tasking two leaders, as yet unnamed, with rapidly cooking up plans to turn the EU clause from words to an ironclad security guarantee. “For decades, some countries said ‘We have NATO, why should we have parallel structures?’” said a senior EU diplomat who was granted anonymity to talk about confidential summit preparations. After Trump’s Greenland saber-rattling, “we are faced with the necessity, we have to set up military command structures within the EU.” At a weekend retreat in Zagreb, Croatia, conservative European leaders including Merz said it was time for the bloc to beef up its homegrown mutual-defense clause, which binds EU countries to an agreement to defend any EU country that comes under attack. | Marko Perkov/AFP via Getty Images In comments to EU lawmakers last week, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said that anyone who believes Europe can defend itself without the U.S. should “keep on dreaming.” Europe remains heavily reliant on U.S. military capabilities, most notably in its support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia. But some Europeans are now openly talking about the price of reducing exposure to the U.S. — and saying it’s manageable. TECHNOLOGY: TEAMS OUT, VISIO IN The mood shift is clearest when it comes to technology, where European reliance on platforms such as X, Meta and Google has long troubled EU voters, as evidenced by broad support for the bloc’s tech legislation. French President Emmanuel Macron’s government is planning to ban officials from using U.S.-based videoconferencing tools. Other countries like Germany are contemplating similar moves. “It’s very clear that Europe is having our independence moment,” EU tech czar Henna Virkkunen told a POLITICO conference last week. “During the last year, everybody has really realized how important it is that we are not dependent on one country or one company when it comes to some very critical technologies.” France is moving to ban public officials from using American platforms including Google Meet, Zoom and Teams, a government spokesperson told POLITICO. Officials will soon make the switch to Visio, a videoconferencing tool that runs on infrastructure provided by French firm Outscale. In the European Parliament, lawmakers are urging its president, Roberta Metsola, to ditch U.S. software and hardware, as well as a U.S.-based travel booking tool. In Germany, politicians want a potential German or European substitute for software made by U.S. data analysis firm Palantir. “Such dependencies on key technologies are naturally a major problem,” Sebastian Fiedler, an SPD lawmaker and expert on policing, told POLITICO. Even in the Netherlands, among Europe’s more pro-American countries, there are growing calls from lawmakers and voters to ring-fence sensitive technologies from U.S. influence. Dutch lawmakers are reviewing a petition signed by 140,000 people calling on the state to block the acquisition of a state identity verification tool by a U.S. company. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in late January, German entrepreneur Anna Zeiter announced the launch of a Europe-based social media platform called W that could rival Elon Musk’s X, which has faced fines for breaching the EU’s content moderation rules. W plans to host its data on “European servers owned by European companies” and limits its investors to Europeans, Zeiter told Euronews. So far, Brussels has yet to codify any such moves into law. But upcoming legislation on cloud and AI services are expected to send signals about the need to Europeanize the bloc’s tech offerings. ENERGY: TIME TO DIVERSIFY On energy, the same trend is apparent. The United States provides more than a quarter of the EU’s gas, a share set to rise further as a full ban on Russian imports takes effect. But EU officials warn about the risk of increasing Europe’s dependency on the U.S. in yet another area. Trump’s claims on Greenland were a “clear wake-up call” for the EU, showing that energy can no longer be seen in isolation from geopolitical trends, EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen said last Wednesday. The Greenland crisis reinforced concerns that the bloc risks “replacing one dependency with another,” said Jørgensen, adding that as a result, Brussels is stepping up efforts to diversify, deepening talks with alternative suppliers including Canada, Qatar and North African countries such as Algeria. FINANCE: MOVING TO EUROPEAN PAYMENTS Payment systems are also drawing scrutiny, with lawmakers warning about over-reliance on U.S. payment systems such as Mastercard and Visa. The digital euro, a digital version of cash that the European Central Bank is preparing to issue in 2029, aims to cut these dependencies and provide a pan-European sovereign means of payment. “With the digital euro, Europeans would remain in control of their money, their choices and their future,” ECB President Christine Lagarde said last year. In Germany, some politicians are sounding the alarm about 1,236 tons of gold reserves that Germany keeps in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. “In a time of growing global uncertainty and under President Trump’s unpredictable U.S. policy, it’s no longer acceptable” to have that much in gold reserves in the U.S., Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, the German politician from the liberal Free Democratic Party, who chairs the Parliament’s defense committee, told Der Spiegel. Several European countries are pushing the EU to privilege European manufacturers when it comes to spending EU public money via “Buy European” clauses. Until a few years ago, countries like Poland, the Netherlands or the Baltic states would never have agreed on such “Buy European” clauses. But even those countries are now backing calls to prioritize purchases from EU-based companies. MILITARY INVESTMENT: BOOSTING OWN CAPACITY A €150 billion EU program to help countries boost their defense investments, finalized in May of last year, states that no more than 35 percent of the components in a given purchase, by cost, should originate from outside the EU and partner states like Norway and Ukraine. The U.S. is not considered a partner country under the scheme. For now, European countries rely heavily on the U.S. for military enablers including surveillance and reconnaissance, intelligence, strategic lift, missile defense and space-based assets. But the powerful conservative umbrella group, the European People Party, says these are precisely the areas where Europe needs to ramp up its own capacities. When EU leaders from the EPP agreed on their 2026 roadmap in Zagreb, they stated that the “Buy European” principle should apply to an upcoming Commission proposal on joint procurement. The title of the EPP’s 2026 roadmap? “Time for independence.” Camille Gijs, Jacopo Barigazzi, Mathieu Pollet, Giovanna Faggionato, Eliza Gkritsi, Elena Giordano, Ben Munster and Sam Clark contributed reporting from Brussels. James Angelos contributed reporting from Berlin.

LONDON — It’s a far cry from the ice age of U.K.-China relations that characterized Rishi Sunak’s leadership — and it’s not exactly David Cameron’s “golden era,” either.  As U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer embarks on his Chinese charm offensive against a turbulent economic backdrop, he has opted for a softly-softly approach in a bid to warm up one of Britain’s most important trading partners — a marked departure from his Tory predecessors. With the specter of U.S. President Donald Trump looming over the visit — not to mention national security concerns back home — Starmer’s cautious optimism is hardly surprising.  Despite reservations from China skeptics, Starmer’s trip — the first such visit by a British prime minister since 2018 — was peppered with warm words and a smattering of deals, some more consequential than others. Britain’s haul from the trip may be modest, but it’s just the beginning, Business and Trade Secretary Peter Kyle — who joined Starmer on the trip — told a traveling pack of reporters in Beijing. “This visit is a springboard,” the minister said. “This is not the last moment, it is a springboard into a future with far more action to come.” STEP-BY-STEP On the ground in Beijing, British officials gave the impression that the prime minister was focused on getting as many uncontroversial wins over the line as possible, in a bid to thaw relations with China. That’s not to say Starmer and his team don’t have a few tangible wins to write home about. Headline announcements include a commitment from China to allow visa-free travel for British tourists and business travelers, enabling visits of up to 30 days without the need for documents.   The provisions are similar to those extended to 50 other countries including France, Germany, Italy, Australia and Japan. The timings of the visa change have not yet been set out publicly, but one official — who, like others cited in this piece, was granted anonymity to speak freely — said they were aiming to get it nailed down in coming months. “From a business standpoint, it will reduce a lot of friction,” said a British business representative, adding it will make it easier for U.K. firms to explore opportunities and form partnerships. “China is very complicated. You have to be on the ground to really assess opportunities,” they said, adding visa-free travel “will make things a lot easier.” The commitment to visa-free travel forms part of a wider services package aimed at driving  collaboration for businesses in healthcare, financial and professional services, legal services, education and skills — areas where British firms often face regulatory or administrative hurdles.  The countries have also agreed to conduct a “feasibility study” to explore whether to enter negotiations towards a bilateral services agreement. If it goes ahead, this would establish clear and legally binding rules for U.K. firms doing business in China. Once again, the timeframe is vague. David Taylor, head of policy at the Asia House think tank in London, said “Xi’s language has been warmer and more expansive, signaling interest in stabilizing the relationship, but the substance on offer so far remains tightly defined.” “Beyond the immediate announcements, progress — particularly on services and professional access — will be harder and slower if it happens at all,” he added. WHISKY TARIFF RELIEF Another victory talked up by the British government is a plan for China to slash Scotch whisky tariffs by half, from 10 percent to 5 percent.  However, some may question the scale of the commitment, which effectively restores the rate that was in place one year ago, ahead of a doubling of the rate for whisky and brandy in February 2025. The two sides have not yet set out a timeframe for the reduction of tariffs.  Speaking to POLITICO ahead of Starmer’s trip, a senior business representative said the whisky and brandy issue had become “China leverage” in talks leading up to the visit. However, they argued that even a removal of the tariff was “not going to solve the main issue for British whisky companies in China and everywhere, which is that people aren’t buying and drinking whisky.” CHINA INVESTMENT WIN Meanwhile, China can boast a significant win in the form of a $15 billion investment in medicines manufacturing and research and development from British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.  ING Bank’s global healthcare lead Stephen Farelly said that increasing investment into China “makes good business sense,” given the country is “now becoming a force in biopharma.” However, it “does shine a light on the isolation of Europe and the U.K. more generally, where there is a structural decline in investment and R&D.” AstraZeneca recently paused a £200 million investment at a Cambridge research site in September last year, which was due to create 1,000 jobs.  Britain recently increased the amount the NHS pays for branded, pharmaceutical drugs, following heavy industry lobbying and following trade negotiations with the Trump administration — all in the hopes of attracting new investment into the struggling sector.  Shadow Trade Secretary Andrew Griffith was blunt in his assessment. “AstraZeneca’s a great British company but under this government it’s investing everywhere in the world other than its U.K. home. When we are losing investment to communist China, alarm bells should be ringing in No 10 Downing Street.” Conspicuously absent from Starmer’s haul was any mention of net zero infrastructure imports, like solar panels, a reflection of rising concerns about China’s grip on Britain’s critical infrastructure. XI RETURNS So what next? As Starmer prepares to fly back home, attention has already turned to his next encounter with the Chinese leader.  On Thursday, Britain opened the door to an inward visit by Xi Jinping, with Downing Street repeatedly declining to rule out the prospect of welcoming him in future. Asked about the prospect of an inward visit — which would be the first for 11 years — Starmer’s official spokesperson told reporters: “I think the prime minister has been clear that a reset relationship with China, that it’s no longer in an ice age, is beneficial to British people and British business.” As Starmer’s trip draws to a close, one thing is certain: there is more to come. “This isn’t a question of a one-and-done summit with China,” Starmer’s spokesperson added. “It is a resetting of a relationship that has been on ice for eight years.”

LONDON — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney left Beijing and promptly declared the U.S.-led “world order” broken. Don’t expect his British counterpart to do the same. Keir Starmer will land in the Chinese capital Wednesday for the first visit by a U.K. prime minister since 2018. By meeting President Xi Jinping, he will end what he has called an “ice age” under the previous Conservative administration, and try to win deals that he can sell to voters as a boost to Britain’s sputtering economy. Starmer is one of a queue of leaders flocking to the world’s second-largest economy, including France’s Emmanuel Macron in December and Germany’s Friedrich Merz next month. Like Carney did in Davos last week, the British PM has warned the world is the most unstable it has been for a generation. Yet unlike Carney, Starmer is desperate not to paint this as a rupture from the U.S. — and to avoid the criticism Trump unleashed on Carney in recent days over his dealings with China. The U.K. PM is trying to ride three horses at once, staying friendly — or at least engaging — with Washington D.C., Brussels and Beijing.  It is his “three-body problem,” joked a senior Westminster figure who has long worked on British-China relations. POLITICO spoke to 22 current and former officials, MPs, diplomats, industry figures and China experts, most of whom were granted anonymity to speak frankly. They painted a picture of a leader walking the same tightrope he always has surrounded by grim choices — from tricky post-Brexit negotiations with the EU, to Donald Trump taking potshots at British policies and freezing talks on a U.K.-U.S. tech deal. Starmer wants his (long-planned) visit to China to secure growth, but be cautious enough not to compromise national security or enrage Trump. He appears neither to have ramped up engagement with Beijing in response to Trump, nor reduced it amid criticism of China’s espionage and human rights record. In short, he doesn’t want any drama. “Starmer is more managerial. He wants to keep the U.K.’s relationships with big powers steady,” said one person familiar with planning for the trip. “You can’t really imagine him doing a Carney or a Macron and using the trip to set out a big geopolitical vision.” An official in 10 Downing Street added: “He’s clear that it is in the U.K.’s interests to have a relationship with the world’s second biggest economy. While the U.S. is our closest ally, he rejects the suggestion that means you can’t have pragmatic dealings with China.” He will be hoping Trump — whose own China visit is planned for April — sees it that way too. BRING OUT THE CAVALRY Starmer has one word in his mind for this trip — growth, which was just 0.1 percent in the three months to September. The prime minister will be flanked by executives from City giants HSBC, Standard Chartered, Schroders and the London Stock Exchange Group; pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca; car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover; energy provider Octopus; and Brompton, the folding bicycle manufacturer. The priority in Downing Street will be bringing back “a sellable headline,” said the person familiar with trip planning quoted above. The economy is the overwhelming focus. While officials discussed trying to secure a political win, such as China lifting sanctions it imposed on British parliamentarians in 2021, one U.K. official said they now believe this to be unlikely. Between them, five people familiar with the trip’s planning predicted a large number of deals, dialogues and memorandums of understanding — but largely in areas with the fewest national security concerns. These are likely to include joint work on medical, health and life sciences, cooperation on climate science, and work to highlight Mandarin language schemes, the people said.  Officials are also working on the mutual recognition of professional qualifications and visa-free travel for short stays, while firms have been pushing for more expansive banking and insurance licences for British companies operating in China. The U.K. is meanwhile likely to try to persuade Beijing to lower import tariffs on Scotch whisky, which doubled in February 2025. A former U.K. official who was involved in Britain’s last prime ministerial visit to China, by Theresa May in 2018, predicted all deals will already be “either 100 or 99 percent agreed, in the system, and No. 10 will already have a firm number in its head that it can announce.” THREADING THE NEEDLE Yet all five people agreed there is unlikely to be a deal on heavy energy infrastructure, including wind turbine technology, that could leave Britain vulnerable to China. The U.K. has still not decided whether to let Ming Yang, a Chinese firm, invest £1.5 billion in a wind farm off the coast of Scotland. And while Carney agreed to ease tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), three of the five people familiar with the trip’s planning said that any deep co-operation on EV technology is likely to be off the table. One of them predicted: “This won’t be another Canada moment. I don’t see us opening the floodgates on EVs.” Britain is trying to stick to “amber and green areas” for any deals, said the first person familiar with the planning. The second of the five people said: “I think they‘re going for the soft, slightly lovey stuff.” Britain has good reason to be reluctant, as Chinese-affiliated groups have long been accused of hacking and espionage, including against MPs and Britain’s Electoral Commission. Westminster was gripped by headlines in December about a collapsed case against two men who had been accused of spying for China. Chinese firm Huawei was banned from helping build the U.K.’s 5G phone network in 2020 after pressure from Trump. Even now, Britain’s security agencies are working on mitigations to telecommunications cables near the Tower of London. They pass close to the boundary of China’s proposed embassy, which won planning approval last week. Andrew Small, director of the Asia Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank working on foreign and security policy, said: “The current debate about how to ‘safely’ increase China’s role in U.K. green energy supplies — especially through wind power — has serious echoes of 5G all over again, and is a bigger concern on the U.S. side than the embassy decision.”  Starmer and his team also “don’t want to antagonize the Americans” ahead of Trump’s own visit in April, said the third of the five people familiar with trip planning. “They’re on eggshells … if they announce a new dialogue on United Nations policy or whatever bullshit they can come up with, any of those could be interpreted as a broadside to the Trump administration.” All these factors mean Starmer’s path to a “win” is narrow. Tahlia Peterson, a fellow working on China at Chatham House, the international affairs think tank, said: “Starmer isn’t going to ‘reset’ the relationship in one visit or unlock large-scale Chinese investment into Britain’s core infrastructure.” Small said foreign firms are being squeezed out of the Chinese market and Xi is “weaponizing” the dependency on Chinese supply chains. He added: “Beijing will likely offer extremely minor concessions in areas such as financial services, [amounting to] no more than a rounding error in economic scale.” Chancellor Rachel Reeves knows the pain of this. Britain’s top finance minister was mocked when she returned with just £600 million of agreements from her visit to China a year ago. One former Tory minister said the figure was a “deliberate insult” by China. Even once the big win is in the bag, there is the danger of it falling apart on arrival. Carney announced Canada and China would expand visa-free travel, only for Beijing’s ambassador to Ottawa to say that the move was not yet official. Despite this, businesses have been keen on Starmer’s re-engagement.  Rain Newton-Smith, director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, said firms are concerned about the dependence on Chinese rare earths but added: “If you map supply chains from anywhere, the idea that you can decouple from China is impossible. It’s about how that trade can be facilitated in the best way.” EMBASSY ROW Even if Starmer gets his wins, this visit will bring controversies that (critics say) show the asymmetry in Britain’s relationship with China. A tale of two embassies serves as a good metaphor.  Britain finally approved plans last week for China’s new outpost in London, despite a long row over national security. China held off formally confirming Starmer’s visit until the London embassy decision was finalized, the first person familiar with planning for the trip said. (Others point out Starmer would not want to go until the issue was resolved.) The result was a scramble in which executives were only formally invited a week before take-off. And Britain has not yet received approval to renovate its own embassy in Beijing. Officials privately refer to the building as “falling down,” while one person who has visited said construction materials were piled up against walls. It is “crumbling,” added another U.K. official: “The walls have got cracks on them, the wallpaper’s peeling off, it’s got damp patches.” British officials refused to give any impression of a “quid pro quo” for the two projects under the U.K.’s semi-judicial planning system. But that means much of Whitehall still does not know if Britain’s embassy revamp in Beijing will be approved, or held back until China’s project in London undergoes a further review in the courts. U.K. officials are privately pressing their Chinese counterparts to give the green light. One of the people keenest on a breakthrough will be Britain’s new ambassador to Beijing Peter Wilson, a career diplomat described by people who have met him as “outstanding,” “super smart” and “very friendly.”  For Wilson, hosting Starmer will be one of his trickiest jobs yet. The everyday precautions when doing business in China have made preparations for this trip more intense. Government officials and corporate executives are bringing secure devices and will have been briefed on the risk of eavesdropping and honeytraps. One member of Theresa May’s 2018 delegation to China recalled opening the door of what they thought was their vehicle, only to see several people with headsets on, listening carefully and typing. They compared it to a scene in a spy film. Activists and MPs will put Starmer under pressure to raise human rights issues — including what campaigners say is a genocide against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang province — on a trip governed by strict protocol where one stray word can derail a deal.  Pro-democracy publisher Jimmy Lai, who has British nationality, is facing sentencing in Hong Kong imminently for national security offenses. During the PM’s last meeting with Xi in 2024, Chinese officials bundled British journalists out of the room when he raised the case. Campaigners had thought Lai’s sentencing could take place this week. All these factors mean tension in the British state — which has faced a tussle between “securocrats” and departments pushing for growth — has been high ahead of the trip. Government comments on China are workshopped carefully before publication. Earlier this month, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told POLITICO her work on Beijing involves looking at “transnational repression” and “espionage threats.” But when Chancellor Rachel Reeves met China’s Finance Minister He Lifeng in Davos last week to tee up Starmer’s visit, the U.K. Treasury did not publicize the meeting — beyond a little-noticed photo on its Flickr account. SLOW BOAT TO CHINA Whatever the controversies, Labour’s China stance has been steadily taking shape since before Starmer took office in 2024. Labour drew inspiration from its sister party in Australia and the U.S. Democrats, both of which had regular meetings with Beijing. Party aides argued that after a brief “golden era” under Conservative PM David Cameron, Britain engaged less with China than with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The result of Labour’s thinking was the policy of “three Cs” — “challenge, compete, and cooperate.” A procession of visits to Beijing followed, most notably Reeves last year, culminating in Starmer’s trip. His National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell was involved in planning across much of 2025, even travelling to meet China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, in November. Starmer teed up this week’s visit with a December speech arguing the “binary” view of China had persisted for too long. He promised to engage with Beijing carefully while taking a “more transactional approach to pretty well everything.”  The result was that this visit has long been locked in; just as Labour aides argue the London embassy decision was set in train in 2018, when the Tory government gave diplomatic consent for the site. Labour ministers “just want to normalize” the fact of dealing with China, said the senior Westminster figure quoted above. Newton-Smith added: “I think the view is that the government’s engagement with eyes wide open is the right strategy. And under the previous government, we did lose out.” But for each person who praises the re-engagement, there are others who say it has left Britain vulnerable while begging for scraps at China’s table. Hawks argue the hard details behind the “three Cs” were long nebulous, while Labour’s long-awaited “audit” of U.K.-China relations was delayed before being folded briefly into a wider security document. “Every single bad decision now can be traced back to the first six months,” argued the third person familiar with planning quoted above. “They were absolutely ill-prepared and made a series of decisions that have boxed them into a corner.” They added: “The government lacks the killer instinct to deal with China. It’s not in their DNA.” Luke de Pulford, a human rights campaigner and director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, argued the Tories had engaged with China — Foreign Secretary James Cleverly visited in 2023 — and Labour was simply going much further. “China is pursuing an enterprise to reshape the global order in its own image, and to that end, to change our institutions and way of life to the extent that they’re an obstacle to it,” he said. “That’s what they’re up to — and we keep falling for it.” END OF THE OLD ORDER? His language may be less dramatic, but Starmer’s visit to China does have some parallels with Canada. Carney’s trip was the first by a Canadian PM since 2017, and he and Xi agreed a “new strategic partnership.” Later at Davos, the Canadian PM talked of “the end of a pleasant fiction” and warned multilateral institutions such as the United Nations are under threat. One British industry figure who attended Davos said of Carney’s speech: “It was great. Everyone was talking about it. Someone said to me that was the best and most poignant speech they’d ever seen at the World Economic Forum. That may be a little overblown, but I guess most of the speeches at the WEF are quite dull.” The language used by Starmer, a former human rights lawyer devoted to multilateralism, has not been totally dissimilar. Britain could no longer “look only to international institutions to uphold our values and interests,” he said in December. “We must do it ourselves through deals and alliances.” But while some in the U.K. government privately agree with Carney’s point, the real difference is the two men’s approach to Trump. Starmer will temper his messaging carefully to avoid upsetting either his Chinese hosts or the U.S., even as Trump throws semi-regular rocks at Britain. To Peterson, this is unavoidable. “China, the U.S. and the EU are likely to continue to dominate global economic growth for the foreseeable future,” she said. “Starmer’s choice is not whether to engage, but how.” Esther Webber contributed reporting.

STEVENAGE, England — Nigel Farage has a Donald Trump problem. Even voters keen on his poll-topping party are unsure about the company he keeps. Among a key constituency of women considering switching from the ruling Labour Party to Reform UK, concern about Farage’s relationship with Donald Trump is rife, according to a new focus group and polling shared with POLITICO. In the midst of Trump’s tariff saber-rattling this week, POLITICO listened to the group of women living in the commuter-belt town of Stevenage — 30 miles north of London. To protect those taking part in the study, all names used below are pseudonymous. “Stevenage woman” became pollsters’ shorthand for mothers based in towns and suburbs at the last election, who were seen as crucial to Labour’s 2024 general election victory. Farage might “just be a stooge” for Trump, Lauren, a mental health support worker, said. “He might just be [Trump’s] whipping boy. That kind of concerns me,” the 54-year-old added. Jane, a 51-year-old stay-at-home mum of three, said: “There’s no one who will actually stand up to him. Trump would say, ‘do this, do that,’ and Nigel would be like ‘yep, yep.'” When asked to pinpoint the greatest threat to the U.K., Rachel, a 47-year-old property manager, said: “I think Trump, full stop.” These women are not alone in their view. Wider polling by More in Common, the think tank which organized the focus group held on Monday night, found 25 percent of women see Farage’s support for Trump as the top reason not to vote Reform. That compared to 21 percent of the men surveyed between Jan. 10 and 13. More in Common’s sample size was 2,036 people. FRIENDS CAN DISAGREE Farage has often spoken of his admiration for Trump. The Reform leader famously shared a snap of himself with the U.S. president-elect in Trump Tower after his shock first-term election victory in 2016. Nigel Farage arriving at Trump Tower, New York City, Dec. 15, 2016. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images That association has continued. The pair met in the Oval Office last September when Farage was in Washington. But the Reform leader’s support for Trump has its limits. Farage this week described U.S. tariff threats over the U.K.’s opposition to the annexation of Greenland as “wrong,” as European leaders lined-up to condemn Trump’s economic aggression towards his NATO allies. “Friends will disagree,” Farage said in an interview with Bloomberg in Davos on Thursday morning, insisting a close relationship with the U.S. did not mean being “beholden.” Despite their Trump misgivings, the Stevenage women are still minded to vote for Farage’s Reform UK. “I quite liked him on ‘I’m a Celebrity’ and it’s grown from there,” Alice, a 55-year-old building society manager, said, referencing Farage’s 2023 appearance on the reality jungle game show. “God knows what would happen if he got into power. But could he be any worse [than the current government]?,” she said, to an emphatic “no” from others in the room. Reform is “gaining a lot of support through default, aren’t they?,” Lauren, the mental health worker quoted above, said, citing a wider loss of trust in the mainstream parties.  “I just feel like anything is better than now and it depresses me,” Megan, a 48-year-old regional manager for a brewer, said. “If I could see a little shimmer of light for our future for our children, I think I would want to go down that way,” she said of Reform. WHY NOT STARMER? Despite attempts to exploit Farage’s perceived vulnerability on foreign policy this month, there are few signs Starmer is reaping any electoral reward. Asked how the British PM is doing, 63-year-old retiree Sandra said “rubbish.”  “Nothing’s really changed,” she said. “We thought the new government were coming in with all these promises and that, and actually nothing. … We’re still in a state, aren’t we?” The Stevenage women POLITICO spoke to made it clear they were no longer fans of Starmer’s Labour, but More in Common Executive Director Luke Tryl says the Trump factor still remains a risk for Farage. “This group of women had no time for Trump and his tactics and wondered what the president’s erraticism would mean for their safety and security and the future of their children,” the think tank boss said. “With Brits already saying that Nigel Farage’s relationship with Trump is the biggest barrier to voting Reform, particularly women, and over half of the country describing Farage as Britain’s Trump, there is a very real risk that the Reform leader’s association with the U.S. president means that a Farage premiership is seen as a risk too far,” he added.

BRUSSELS — It reads like Washington’s worst nightmare: a European tech regulator independent of the Brussels institutions and armed to crack down on the violations of U.S. companies. But that’s exactly what some in Brussels say is now needed as the EU struggles to get a grip on how to implement and enforce its digital laws amid repeated political attacks from the White House. The attacks are reviving a long-held goal among EU legislators: to establish an independent, well-resourced regulator that sits outside EU institutions to enforce its many tech rulebooks. While the dream faces hurdles to becoming a reality, the timing of its resurrection reflects growing concerns that the EU has failed to underpin its ambition to be the world’s digital policeman with adequate enforcement structures that can resist U.S. attacks. After years of lawmaking, Brussels governs through a patchwork of rules and institutions that clash with the reality of U.S. politics. The EU’s maze of rules and regulators has also been thrown into sharp focus by the ongoing Grok scandal, which saw the artificial intelligence tool allow users of Elon Musk’s X to generate sexualized deepfakes. The EU’s maze of rules and regulators has also been thrown into sharp focus by the ongoing Grok scandal. | Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto via Getty Images “The enforcement is not happening because there’s too much pressure from the Trump administration,” said Alexandra Geese, a German Greens European Parliament lawmaker who negotiated the EU’s platform law, the Digital Services Act. For Geese, it’s an “I told you so” moment after EU legislators floated the possibility of creating a standalone agency to enforce the digital rulebooks when they were being negotiated. A group of EU countries, led by Portugal, also tinkered with the idea late last year. BLACKMAIL The Digital Services Act sits at the center of the U.S.-EU feud over how Brussels is enforcing its tech rules. The European Commission is responsible for enforcing these rules on platforms with over 45 million users in the EU, among them some of the most powerful U.S. companies including Elon Musk’s X, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Alphabet’s Google. As the bloc’s executive arm, the Commission also needs buy-in from the White House for negotiations on tariffs, security guarantees for Ukraine, and a host of other major political topics. The Commission last month slapped a €120 million fine on Musk’s X, its first under the DSA, which prompted a fierce rebuke from Washington. Just weeks later the U.S. imposed a travel ban on Thierry Breton, a former EU commissioner and one of the officials behind the law. It topped off a year in which the U.S. repeatedly attacked the DSA, branding it “censorship” and treating it as a bargaining chip in trade talks. This fueled concerns that the Commission was exposed and that digital fines were, as a result, being delayed or disrupted. Among the evidence was a last-minute intervention by the EU’s trade chief to delay a Google antitrust penalty at what would have been a sensitive time for talks. The fine eventually landed some months later. “Delegating digital enforcement to an independent body would strengthen the EU’s bargaining position against the U.S.,” Mario Mariniello, a non-resident fellow at think tank Bruegel, argued in a September piece on how the Commission could protect itself against blackmail. The need to separate enforcement powers is highest for the bloc’s online content law, he argued. “There, the level of politicization is so high that you would have a significant benefit.” “It’s so political, there’s no real enforcement, there’s no independent enforcement, independent from politics,” Geese said. Alexandra Geese, the German Greens European Parliament lawmaker who negotiated the EU’s platform law, the Digital Services Act. | Martin Bertrand/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images Meanwhile, the recent controversy around X’s AI tool Grok, which allowed users to generate sexualized fakes based on real-life images, has illustrated the complexity of the EU’s existing structures and laws. As a platform, X has to address systemic risks arising from the spread of illegal content under the DSA, while it also faces obligations regarding its AI tool — such as watermarking deepfakes — under the EU’s AI Act. National authorities or prosecutors took an interest in the matter alongside Brussels, because in some countries it’s illegal to share nudes without consent, and because the spread of child sexual abuse material is governed by separate laws involving national regulators. Having a single powerful digital authority could address the fragmented enforcement carried out by several authorities under different EU rulebooks, according to Geese. “It’s absolutely true that the rulebooks are scattered, that enforcement is scattered [and] that it would be easier to have one agency,” Geese said. “It would have made sense … to do that right away [when the laws were being drafted], as an independent agency, a little bit out of the realm of day-to-day politics,” she added. “Europe urgently needs a single digital enforcement agency to provide legal certainty and ensure EU laws work consistently across the Union,” said German Greens European Parliament lawmaker Sergey Lagodinsky, who added that the current enforcement landscape is “siloed, with weak coordination.” HURDLES A proposal to establish such a regulator would likely face opposition from EU governments.  Last year Portugal launched a debate on whether EU countries should be able to appoint a single digital regulator themselves, as they grappled with the enforcement of several rulebooks.  “The central question is whether a single digital regulator should be established, at national level, coordinating responsibilities currently spread across multiple authorities whilst ensuring a more integrated consistent approach to enforcement,” Portuguese Minister for State Reform Gonçalo Matias wrote in an invitation for an October summit with 13 countries, seen by POLITICO.  Although the pitch proved controversial, it received some support in the summit’s final declaration. “The potential establishment of a single digital regulator at national or EU level can consolidate responsibilities, ensure coherent enforcement of EU digital legislation and foster an innovation-friendly regulatory culture,” the 13 countries said.  That group didn’t include countries that are traditionally skeptical of handing power to a Brussels-backed agency, such as Hungary, Slovakia and Poland.  Isolating tech enforcement in an independent agency could also limit the interplay with the Commission’s other enforcement powers, such as on antitrust matters, Mariniello argued.  Even for advocates such as Geese, there is a potential downside to reopening the debate at such a critical moment for digital enforcement. “The world is watching Europe to see how it responds to one of the most egregious episodes of a large language model perpetuating gender based violence,” she wrote in a recent opinion. As for a new agency, “You’re gonna debate this for two or three years, with the Council, and Hungary and Slovakia are going to say: No way. And in the meantime, nothing happens, because that becomes the excuse: The agency is going to do it,” Geese said.

CAMP VIKING, Norway — In the deep snow of the Arctic mountains, Britain’s Royal Marines are readying for war with Russia. The elite troops are introduced to the wilderness by camping in the snow in temperatures below minus 20C. They finish by jumping through ice holes and shouting their name, rank and number before they can be pulled out of the water. Then they roll in the snow, drink a tot of rum, and toast King Charles III. Britain’s extreme weather training in this area dates to the Cold War, but Camp Viking — its facility in Skjold, northern Norway — is new and growing. It opened in 2023 after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is due to reach a peak of 1,500 personnel this spring, followed by 2,000 next year. Britain is “effectively doubling” the number of its Royal Marines in Norway over three years, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told POLITICO in an interview. Exercises mirror missions the troops would conduct if NATO’s Article 5 on collective defense was triggered — reflecting the reality that “we are no longer at peace,” Brigadier Jaimie Norman, commander of the U.K. Commando Forces, told Cooper and her Norwegian counterpart Espen Barth Eide on a visit to the site Thursday. “We see ourselves on a continuum that has war on one end to peace on the other, and we are somewhere on that continuum.” Yet this is only one hemisphere of the Arctic. On the other, U.S. President Donald Trump is stoking a very different crisis by pushing for ownership of Greenland. The risks that link the two regions — which have shipping lanes busier than ever with Russian and Chinese vessels as the polar ice caps melt — are similar, albeit less immediate for Greenland than Norway. Yet Greenland is consuming huge global bandwidth. It is little wonder that Eide, greeting Cooper after he spent two days in Ukraine, lamented that they could not focus more on Ukraine and “less on other things.” Trump has left them with no other choice. FIRE UP THE ‘ARCTIC SENTRY’ Cooper and Eide’s response is to publicly back the idea of an “Arctic Sentry” NATO mission, a military co-operation that would aim to counter Russian threats — while reassuring Trump of Europe’s commitment to the region. Details of the mission — including the number of troops it would involve and whether it would comprise land, sea or air deployments — remain hazy. It could mean that exercises like those in northern Norway are deployed in Greenland too, as well as the shipping lanes around them. Lanes in northern Europe have seen a rise in shadow fleets carrying sanctioned oil and alleged sabotage of communications cables. Yvette Cooper’s message to Trump, and everyone else, was to insist there is no real division between the eastern and western Arctic. | Stefan Rousseau/Getty Images But as with so many issues, they have yet to discover whether Trump will take heed. Cooper’s intervention came one day after U.S. Vice President JD Vance met Danish and Greenlandic representatives at the White House amid growing tensions over Trump’s repeatedly stated intention to take control of Greenland. Cooper’s message to Trump, and everyone else, was to insist there is no real division between the eastern and western Arctic. “The security of the Arctic is all linked,” she said — citing Russia’s northern fleet, shadow fleet, oil tankers, non-military assets, spy ships and threats to undersea cables.  “Look at the map of the Arctic and where you have the sea channels,” she added. “You can’t look at any one bit of Arctic security on its own, because the whole point of the Arctic security is it has an impact on our transatlantic security as a whole. “Some of the Russian threat is through its Northern Fleet and into the Atlantic. That is a transatlantic threat. That is something where clearly you can’t simply revert to Europe’s defense on its own.” Yet in parts of Britain and Europe, there are plenty of people who fear Trump is asking Europe to do exactly that. European allies have long pushed the U.S. president to nail down commitments to Ukraine. A mere hint of this frustration is visible in Eide. He was keen to point out that the risk to his end of the Arctic is more immediate. “Just to the east of our eastern border, you come to the Kola Peninsula and Murmansk,” he said, standing on a snowy outcrop. “That region has the largest conglomeration of nuclear weapons in the world — and particularly, the second strike capability of Russia is there. They need access to the open oceans, and in a wartime situation, we don’t want them to have that access.” He added: “If there is a crisis, this area will immediately be a center of gravity because of the importance of the nuclear capabilities of Russia, the submarine base and so on. It will go from low tension to being in the midst of it in a very short time. That’s why we need to plan for rapid reinforcement, for rapid stepping up, and also to have a constant military pressure presence in this area.”  Managing this Trump reassurance is a tricky balance. Rachel Ellehus, director general of the non-partisan foreign affairs think tank RUSI and a former U.S. representative at NATO, said: “You want to signal solidarity and presence and engagement, and send a message that Europe is stepping up for this alleged Russian and Chinese threat in and around Greenland.  “But you don’t want to kind of stick your finger in the eye of the United States or signal that you’re looking for some sort of confrontation.” Perhaps for this reason, Ellehus suggested NATO itself is holding back. “The one voice that has been quite silent is that of NATO,” she said. “It’s quite odd that Mark Rutte has not issued a secretary general statement expressing solidarity with Denmark and underscoring that any security concerns that the United States might have could legitimately be addressed through the NATO alliance, because both Denmark and Greenland are members of their territories covered by the Article Five guarantee. “I think it does have consequences in terms of the credibility of the alliance, and I think we could see an intensification of the practice whereby allies are turning to bilateral or regional relationships, score and meet their security to meet their security needs, rather than relying on multinational alliances like NATO.” A NEW ERA A reminder of how fast multilateralism is changing hangs on the library wall in the quaint, pink and white British embassy in Helsinki. The photo, dated July 1975, shows British Prime Minister Harold Wilson in the embassy garden with U.S. President Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger and others on the cusp of signing the Helsinki Accords. The agreement, emphasizing the rights of sovereignty and territorial integrity, was part of a drumbeat toward the end of the Cold War. Britain’s extreme weather training in this area dates to the Cold War, but Camp Viking — its facility in Skjold, northern Norway — is new and growing. | Ben Dance / FCDO Across the street in Helsinki is the fortress-like embassy of the U.S. — where Trump is one of those calling the shots on territorial integrity these days. As well as his designs on Greenland, the president recently said NATO “would not be an effective force or deterrent” without American military power and said he did not need international law. Britain and many of its allies are loath to accept any suggestion of any cracks in the alliance. Asked by POLITICO if NATO was in crisis, Finland’s Foreign Minister Elisa Valtonen insisted: “NATO is stronger than it’s ever been.” Cooper, too, said NATO is “extremely strong” — and argued that those who describe his administration as a destabilising force are being too simplistic. She pointed to the presence of Marco Rubio, a more traditional Republican than Trump who Europeans have found easier to work with than the president, along with work on security guarantees for Ukraine, collaboration on “Five Eyes” intelligence and the plan for Gaza, much of which was led by the U.S. “Of course, everyone can see this administration operates in a different way,” she said, but “in every discussion I’ve had with … Rubio, there has always been a really strong commitment to NATO.” The Gaza plan, she added pointedly, “was actually drawing on international law, the UN framework.” But one U.K. official, not authorized to speak publicly, said there were three schools of thought about Trump’s comments on Greenland. The first is the president’s stated aim that he is concerned about security threats to the Arctic; the second is that he is seeking business opportunities there. And then “there is one school of thought that ultimately, he just wants to take it … he just wants to make America bigger,” they said.

BRUSSELS — If Donald Trump uses military force to take over Greenland, Denmark has options beyond NATO. The core of Denmark’s security rests on the transatlantic alliance — but that’s likely to be of little help in a confrontation with the U.S. as America dominates NATO. Instead, Denmark could trigger a little-known clause in the EU treaties: Article 42.7, the European Union’s common defense pact. While some analysts claim it’s actually stronger than NATO’s better-known Article 5 common defense provision, article 42.7 comes with a lot of caveats and unknowns. POLITICO took at look at five questions on the provision and whether it would make sense for Denmark to trigger it: 1. WHAT DOES IT SAY? “If a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power, in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. This shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States.” The clause was inserted into the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, aimed at giving EU members protection similar to that afforded by NATO. It does give neutral countries some wiggle room in opting out. For many analysts, the EU’s mutual assistance clause “is of a more compelling nature” as it states that member countries have “an obligation” to provide “all aid and assistance by all the means in their power.” NATO’s Article 5 includes the phrase “as it deems necessary” which leaves more room for national discretion. The EU version “is stronger in diplomatic language but the pool of forces is smaller than in the NATO framework,” said Alexander Mattelaer, an associate professor in international security at the Free University Brussels’ School of Governance. 2. HAS IT EVER BEEN USED? Only once. In 2015, France invoked the article in response to ISIS-led terrorist attacks. It allowed Paris to redeploy some of its troops out of Africa to use them to patrol French streets, while EU countries like Germany sent their soldiers to countries like Mali.  The request was supported unanimously by other EU defense ministers. Because the EU has no army, Paris had to negotiate with other EU countries for specific military help. 3. HOW DOES IT WORK? It would be up to Denmark to invoke it. Then, as was the case with France, it would have to be unanimously accepted by all the other member countries. But any EU response that requires unanimity means Denmark could run into problems if countries like Hungary veto its approval, two EU diplomats said. “I don’t think Denmark would invoke it without being sure it has unanimity because it would be a great risk,” said Antonio Missiroli, a former NATO assistant secretary-general who also worked at the European Commission. “Surely a country like Hungary would not take sides against the United States?” he added. There is also some ambiguity over whether it would apply to a crisis in Greenland, which withdrew from the predecessor of the EU in 1985, although it is still a part of the Kingdom of Denmark. On Sunday, EU defense chief Andrius Kubilius said 42.7 would “definitely” apply, with the European Commission last year suggesting the same. Commission spokesperson Anitta Hippe said: “Greenland is part of the territory of kingdom of Denmark and therefore in principle covered by the mutual solidarity clause in art. 42.7.” 4. WHAT HAPPENS THEN? If Denmark successfully invokes the clause, that would send a “very strong political and legal” message, said Sven Biscop, director general of the Egmont Institute think tank and a European security expert. The mechanism doesn’t require the EU itself to step in, leaving it up to the bloc’s capitals, and in particular to the country which invoked it, to determine the next steps. Options range from issuing statements in solidarity, to financial assistance and even military support, said one EU diplomat. Missiroli suggested that one of the options for Denmark could be to use this article “to ask another country to mediate.” While it’s “too early to say” what that response would look like in practice, said one European government official, “we will offer the support that we’d like to have” in a similar scenario. It could lay also the legal groundwork for proposing economic sanctions, Biscop said. Sergey Lagodinsky, a German member of the European Parliament and vice president of the Greens’ group, said the legislature should ready a “laundry list of possible countermeasures” if 42.7 is invoked, including kicking U.S. troops out of European bases, banning overflights of U.S. aircraft and restricting market access for American firms. Invoking the article could involve a limited troop deployment by the EU military committee and military staff — consultative bodies made up of the bloc’s top generals and Brussels-based military representatives, Biscop said. The probability of the EU going to war with the U.S. is zero, analysts agreed. And even if the bloc wanted to, it only has a “few dozen” military staff in Brussels, a miniature command structure able to direct “at most” 3,000 soldiers and limited experience aside from peacekeeping missions, Biscop said. However, member countries could decide on more substantial military assistance using their own resources. Meanwhile, the obligations on countries themselves remain undefined, meaning Denmark may face the “political reality” of some EU capitals making few concrete commitments to help. Because of those ambiguities over how to use the article, last month Kubilius told POLITICO he wants to open a discussion on “institutional defense readiness” this year, which could include revamping Article 42.7 to make it fully operational with a clear procedure and an integrated military command. 5. WHAT WOULD IT MEAN FOR NATO? Denmark has warned that a U.S. annexation of Greenland would spell the end of the alliance, although Trump disagrees. If the U.S. orchestrates a takeover, “it doesn’t necessarily mean … legally at least, the end of NATO, but it would mean politically the hollowing out of NATO’s credibility,” said Fabrice Pothier, CEO of Rasmussen Global, a political consultancy. That could lead to “some EU members [to] go for more EU solutions, maybe putting more flesh behind 42.7,” he added.  But that would involve creating a new security architecture for Europe without the U.S., which has been the continent’s crucial guarantor since World War II. “NATO is in charge of collective defense in the Euro-Atlantic area: it has the defense plans, command and control structures and capability targets,” said a NATO diplomat. “The EU, for its part, brings to the table its financial power, industrial policy and regulatory might.” Seb Starcevic contributed reporting. This article has been updated.

BRUSSELS — On Greenland’s southern tip, surrounded by snowy peaks and deep fjords, lies Kvanefjeld — a mining project that shows the giant, barren island is more than just a coveted military base. Beneath the icy ground sits a major deposit of neodymium and praseodymium, rare earth elements used to make magnets that are essential to build wind turbines, electric vehicles and high-tech military equipment. If developed, Greenland, a semi-autonomous part of Denmark, would become the first European territory to produce these key strategic metals. Energy Transition Minerals, an Australia-based, China-backed mining company, is ready to break ground. But neither Copenhagen, Brussels nor the Greenlandic government have mobilized their state power to make the project happen. In 2009, Denmark handed Greenland’s inhabitants control of their natural resources; 12 years later the Greenlandic government blocked the mine because the rare earths are mixed with radioactive uranium. Since then the project has been in limbo, bogged down in legal disputes. “Kvanefjeld illustrates how political and regulatory uncertainty — combined with geopolitics and high capital requirements — makes even strategically important projects hard to move from potential to production,” Jeppe Kofod, Denmark’s former foreign minister and now a strategic adviser to Energy Transition Minerals, told POLITICO. Kvanefjeld’s woes are emblematic of Greenland’s broader problems. Despite having enough of some rare earth elements to supply as much as 25 percent of the world’s needs — not to mention oil and gas reserves nearly as great as those of the United States, and lots of other potential clean energy metals including copper, graphite and nickel — these resources are almost entirely undeveloped. Just two small mines, extracting gold and a niche mineral called feldspar used in glassmaking and ceramics, are up and running in Greenland. And until very recently, neither Denmark nor the European Union showed much interest in changing the situation. But that was before 2023, when the EU signed a memorandum of understanding with the Greenland government to cooperate on mining projects. The EU Critical Raw Materials Act, proposed the same year, is an attempt to catch up by building new mines both in and out of the bloc that singles out Greenland’s potential. Last month, the European Commission committed to contribute financing to Greenland’s Malmbjerg molybdenum mine in a bid to shore up a supply of the metal for the EU’s defense sector.  But with United States President Donald Trump threatening to take Greenland by force, and less likely to offer the island’s inhabitants veto power over mining projects, Europe may be too late to the party. “The EU has for many years had a limited strategic engagement in Greenland’s critical raw materials, meaning that Europe today risks having arrived late, just as the United States and China have intensified their interest,” Kofod said. In a world shaped by Trump’s increasingly belligerent foreign policy and China’s hyperactive development of clean technology and mineral supply chains, Europe’s neglect of Greenland’s natural wealth is looking increasingly like a strategic blunder. With Donald Trump threatening to take Greenland by force, and less likely to offer the island’s inhabitants veto power over mining projects, Europe may be too late to the party. | Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images A HOSTILE LAND That’s not to say building mines in Greenland, with its mile-deep permanent ice sheet, would be easy. “Of all the places in the world where you could extract critical raw materials, [Greenland] is very remote and not very easily accessible,” said Ditte Brasso Sørensen, senior analyst on EU climate and industrial policy at Think Tank Europa, pointing to the territory’s “very difficult environmental circumstances.”  The tiny population — fewer than 60,000 — and a lack of infrastructure also make it hard to build mines. “This is a logistical question,” said Eldur Olafsson, CEO of Amaroq, a gold mining company running one of the two operating mines in Greenland and also exploring rare earths and copper extraction opportunities. “How do you build mines? Obviously, with capital, equipment, but also people. [And] you need to build the whole infrastructure around those people because they cannot only be Greenlandic,” he said.  Greenland also has strict environmental policies — including a landmark 2021 uranium mining ban — which restrict resource extraction because of its impact on nature and the environment. The current government, voted in last year, has not shown any signs of changing its stance on the uranium ban, according to Per Kalvig, professor emeritus at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, a Danish government research organization. Uranium is routinely found with rare earths, meaning the ban could frustrate Greenland’s huge potential as a rare earths producer. It’s a similar story with fossil fuels. Despite a 2007 U.S. assessment that the equivalent of over 30 billion barrels in oil and natural gas lies beneath the surface of Greenland and its territorial waters — almost equal to U.S. reserves — 30 years of oil exploration efforts by a group including Chevron, Italy’s ENI and Shell came to nothing. In 2021 the then-leftist government in Greenland banned further oil exploration on environmental grounds.  Danish geologist Flemming Christiansen, who was deputy director of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland until 2020, said the failure had nothing to do with Greenland’s actual potential as an oil producer. Instead, he said, a collapse in oil prices in 2014 along with the high cost of drilling in the Arctic made the venture unprofitable. Popular opposition only complicated matters, he said. THE CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECT From the skies above Greenland Christiansen sees firsthand the dramatic effects of climate change: stretches of clear water as rising temperatures thaw the ice sheets that for centuries have made exploring the territory a cold, costly and hazardous business. “If I fly over the waters in west Greenland I can see the changes,” he said. “There’s open water for much longer periods in west Greenland, in Baffin Bay and in east Greenland.” Climate change is opening up this frozen land. Climate change is opening up this frozen land. | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images Greenland contains the largest body of ice outside Antarctica, but that ice is melting at an alarming rate. One recent study suggests the ice sheet could cease to exist by the end of the century, raising sea levels by as much as seven meters. Losing a permanent ice cap that is several hundred meters deep, though, “gradually improves the business case of resource extraction, both for … fossil fuels and also critical raw materials,” said Jakob Dreyer, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen.   But exploiting Greenland’s resources doesn’t hinge on catastrophic levels of global warming. Even without advanced climate change, Kalvig, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, argues Greenland’s coast doesn’t differ much from that of Norway, where oil has been found and numerous excavation projects operate.     “You can’t penetrate quite as far inland as you can [in Norway], but once access is established, many places are navigable year-round,” Kalvig said. “So, in that sense, it’s not more difficult to operate mines in Greenland than it is in many parts of Norway, Canada or elsewhere — or Russia for that matter. And this has been done before, in years when conditions allowed.”    A European Commission spokesperson said the EU was now working with Greenland’s government to develop its resources, adding that Greenland’s “democratically elected authorities have long favored partnerships with the EU to develop projects beneficial to both sides.” But the spokesperson stressed: “The fate of Greenland’s raw mineral resources is up to the Greenlandic people and their representatives.” The U.S. may be less magnanimous. Washington’s recent military operation in Venezuela showed that Trump is serious about building an empire on natural resources, and is prepared to use force and break international norms in pursuit of that goal. Greenland, with its vast oil and rare earths deposits, may fit neatly into his vision. Where the Greenlandic people fit in is less clear.

BRUSSELS — A coalition of European left parties has launched a call for signatures to force the European Commission to suspend the EU’s association agreement with Israel over Gaza. Despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement in October, Israel has kept attacking targets in the Gaza Strip with airstrikes, drones and tanks, prompting the pro-Palestinian movement to renew its calls for the EU to take action against Israel. The coalition — led by France’s La France Insoumise, Spain’s Podemos, Portugal’s Bloco de Esquerda, and Nordic left parties — has launched a European Citizens Initiative titled “Justice for Palestine” calling on the EU executive suspend ties with Israel over its “genocide against the Palestinian population, and its ongoing violations of international law and human rights.” If the initiative receives a million signatures from at least seven EU counties — a likely outcome given the popularity of the issue — the Commission will be forced to state which actions, if any, it will take in respond to the initiative. “The EU pretends everything is back to normal, but we will not turn a blind eye to what is happening in Gaza,” said MEP Manon Aubry, the leader of La France Insoumise, adding the “EU is helping to finance genocide” by not suspending trade relations with Israel. More than 100 children have been killed since the ceasefire agreement was signed in March, UNICEF said Tuesday. The Commission already proposed in November to suspend some parts of the association agreement and to sanction some “extremist ministers” in the cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But parts of the package were never implemented because they required unanimous approval from EU countries. After the ceasefire was reached the Commission proposed withdrawing the measures; the issue has remained frozen ever since. Foreign ministers from numerous EU countries as well as the U.K., Norway, Canada and Japan sharply criticized an Israeli decision to bar 37 international non-governmental organizations from providing aid to Gaza. The humanitarian situation in the besieged territory remains dire, with many living outdoors in winter weather. Four people were killed on Tuesday when a storm caused buildings that had been damaged in the war to collapse, according to local media.