GREENLAND ONCE LEFT THE EUROPEAN PROJECT WHILE DENMARK REMAINED INSIDE. IF YOU WANT A NEAT EXAMPLE OF GREENLAND MAKING A DIFFERENT POLITICAL CHOICE, THERE IT IS.
When Denmark joined the European Economic Community in 1973, Greenland came along even though a large majority of Greenlandic voters had opposed membership in Denmark’s 1972 referendum. At the time, Greenland did not yet have home rule. The constitutional machinery in Copenhagen decided the international result.
Home rule arrived in 1979. Three years later, Greenland held its own referendum on membership. A narrow majority voted to leave. On February 1, 1985, Greenland withdrew from the European Community. Denmark stayed.
Fish was politics
This was not an abstract seminar about European identity. Fisheries were central. Control of the waters around Greenland goes straight to jobs, public revenue, food and political authority. Rules written for a European common market did not automatically fit a huge Arctic island with a small population and an economy built around the sea.
The vote was close—roughly 53 percent favored leaving—but the consequence was unmistakable. Greenland had acquired enough self-government to choose a different relationship with Europe from Denmark’s.
Leaving did not mean disappearing
Greenland is not an EU member today. It is associated with the European Union as an Overseas Country and Territory, and it maintains agreements and partnerships with the EU, including on fisheries, education and development. Greenlanders are Danish citizens and therefore also EU citizens, even though EU law does not generally apply to Greenland as territory.
Yes, the legal arrangement is complicated. The Arctic has a habit of punishing simple slogans.
A political fact Americans should remember
Greenland’s 1985 exit matters because it shows that the relationship inside the Kingdom of Denmark is neither ordinary provincial government nor full state sovereignty. Greenland can make major choices of its own, while other powers remain shared or sit with the Kingdom.
That in-between status can look untidy from Washington. Democracy is often untidy. It is still better than treating Greenland as an object passed between larger capitals.
Greenland did not leave Europe geographically. It changed the terms of a political relationship. That distinction—between place, people and constitutional arrangement—is the beginning of understanding Greenland, not a technical footnote.
Last fact-checked: September 2026.