by Shay Gal
In Davos last week, sovereignty was put on the table. “Total access” to Greenland, with no expiry date. Brussels reacted swiftly. Nuuk was clear: sovereignty is not negotiable. In Nicosia, on 1 January, Cyprus assumed the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the only member state that has lived for half a century with territory treated as a bargaining object.
Greenland and Cyprus are not the same case. One is a self governing Danish territory, the other EU territory under foreign occupation. In January they became the same European problem: sovereignty under pressure without force. Europe may dismiss Greenland as a transatlantic irritant. That is a mistake. When European territory becomes a bargaining asset, the precedent travels. It reaches Cyprus. Cyprus is ready, not by demand but by design, holding the Presidency of the Council.
In the European Union, power rarely announces itself with flags. It operates through procedure: who chairs the meeting, who writes the compromise, what enters the agenda, what becomes a Council conclusion, what is deferred until it hardens into routine. The rotating Presidency is built for that form of power. Cyprus now chairs the machinery that turns 27 sovereignties into one position, precisely as Europe is asked whether sovereignty itself is negotiable.
The lesson Cyprus offers Denmark and Greenland is not a slogan. It is a method.
Never allow a sovereignty question to be reframed as convenience. The moment “security access” becomes a debate over ownership, the issue is no longer defence; it is title. Cyprus has watched for decades how pragmatic arrangements solidify into political architecture. In Greenland, the temptation will be to offer access, facilities and concessions to quiet pressure. That may ease the week. It poisons the decade by proving that coercion works.
Consent must be treated as a technical constraint, not a moral preference. Greenland is self governing. Denmark is sovereign. Any serious European response must respect both: no negotiation about Greenland without Nuuk, no pressure on Copenhagen framed as “allies’ business”, no deal that reduces a people to a variable. Cyprus knows what it means when outsiders “solve” an island without the island. When consent is sidelined, settlement becomes theatre and conflict mutates rather than ends.
Europe’s credibility is now one file. If the Union responds to Greenland with urgency while managing the occupation of Cyprus as routine, it teaches a brutal lesson: European territorial integrity is defended only against adversaries, not against pressure from allies or candidates. Ankara will not miss that signal.
The Cyprus Presidency can now turn the Greenland shock into doctrine.
Operational sovereignty is the capacity to defend member state territory and decision making through instruments that impose consequence.
What can Cyprus do with the Presidency?
Not everything. That is precisely why it matters. Cyprus cannot set foreign policy, chair the Foreign Affairs Council or replace the Commission. What it can do is decisive: shape the Union’s decisions so that sovereignty ceases to be a talking point and becomes a condition embedded across EU files.
The Presidency can drive Council conclusions linking the Arctic and the Mediterranean to one rule: European territory and sovereign choice are not bargaining chips. This is not escalation. It is hygiene. It anchors Denmark and Greenland while narrowing the space in which Ankara has normalised the idea that an occupied part of an EU state can be treated as a separate outcome. Under Cypriot chairmanship, this reads not as self interest, but as European self defence.
The Greenland episode arrived not only through speeches, but through tariff threats. Europe has tools for this, including the Anti Coercion Instrument, but unused tools signal acquiescence. During its Presidency, Cyprus will preside over the Council when trade ministers meet on common commercial policy, placing Nicosia where Europe decides whether economic pressure meets concern or deterrence. If Washington learns that pressuring Denmark triggers a European response with a defined timetable and menu, “one way or the other” stops being a style and becomes a mistake. A lesson learned in the Arctic will echo in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Greenland is increasingly framed through critical minerals and future supply chains. Europe already has a legal framework for its overseas territories and is negotiating the next multiannual budget. The Cyprus Presidency can push the relevant budgetary and partnership frameworks to offer Greenland something stronger than sympathy: predictable European funding, shared standards and investment that respects local authority. Treat Greenland as a partner that chooses, not a prize to be taken, and Europe demonstrates sovereignty in practice. Cyprus, which has preserved legal continuity despite disrupted control, is the right Presidency to make that case.
This week, the UN Secretary General’s envoy meets the Cypriot negotiators and the two leaders in Nicosia. The timing matters. As Greenland shows how fast sovereignty files can move, Cyprus can ensure EU support for the UN process is embedded in governance: coherence across aid, the Green Line regime, energy and digital compliance, every interface where Europe can reinforce unity or allow separation to deepen.
The occupation will not end by paperwork alone. But it is sustained by paperwork and by Europe’s habit of normalising abnormality. That habit can be broken from within.
The delicate part is Washington.
Recent days have shown no dependable external rescue is coming, and no policy architecture aimed at restoring Cypriot sovereignty. Greenland clarified the pattern. When allied territory is treated as negotiable space rather than sovereignty to be restored, leverage replaces principle, and tolerance of faits accomplis becomes strategy. This is not hostility toward Cyprus, nor indifference to its fate. It is a strategic posture that privileges access, flexibility and transaction over restoration and permanence. Reunification will not be brokered from outside, and it will not be guaranteed by partners whose frameworks treat sovereignty as adjustable. Responsibility has shifted. The tools, the law and the duty now sit where membership does. Inside Europe itself.
Cyprus’s Presidency matters, for Europe and for Cyprus. Under Cyprus’ chairmanship, the Union sets one rule: no coercion, no shortcuts around consent, no tolerance for territorial revisionism. Denmark and Greenland are secured; Ankara’s room narrows.
Cyprus will not be reunified by June, but Europe makes one decisive clarification: Cyprus is not a frozen dispute on the periphery, but a test of European territorial integrity. Greenland at the top of the map and Cyprus at the bottom, one pressed by appetite, the other by force, reveal the same truth. Sovereignty is not protected by declaration, but by systems that cannot be traded.
For 6 months, Cyprus holds the Council’s gavel. That time is enough to restore a discipline Europe has forgotten and apply it where it has failed for fifty years, in Cyprus itself.
Shay Gal is a strategic analyst and adviser specialising in international security, European policy and geopolitical crisis management. He advises senior government and defence leaders on complex strategic challenges, particularly in the fields of public diplomacy and strategic communications. His work focuses on power dynamics and the role of law and institutions in shaping strategic decision making.
Also read: Operational Unbundling: How Regional Agreements Are Dismantling the Logic of Occupation
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