A sudden US decision to unleash trade war against EU and Nato allies over Greenland has struck another blow inside the Western family, delighting Russia.
EU ambassadors held emergency talks on "transatlantic relations" in Brussels on Sunday (20 January) after US president Donald Trump dropped his trade bombshell on social media on Saturday.
They discussed imposing up to €93bn of EU tariffs on US goods in retaliation, according to the FT newspaper, in a meeting which lasted over two hours.
The six EU states and two Nato allies who were attacked by Trump's new tariffs – Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and the UK – warned in a joint statement this would "undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral".
French president Emmanuel Macron called for sweeping European retaliation against US businesses by invoking a never-before-used EU "Anti-Coercion Instrument [ACI]".
And the EU Parliament de facto froze ratification of a previous zero percent-tariff deal on US imports, which was due to have taken place in Strasbourg on Wednesday.
Trump imposed tariffs on his allies because they had sent troops to Greenland in a symbolic show of solidarity, following his repeated threats to seize the Danish island by force.
Germany ended its deployment in the 'Arctic Endurance' mission on Sunday, when its contingent of 15 soldiers returned home.
But the Arctic Endurance group now faced 10 percent-tariffs on their US imports, rising to 25 percent from June, until Denmark agreed to sell Greenland to Trump.
Macron, German chancellor Friedrich Merz, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, and Nato secretary general Mark Rutte are to meet Trump at the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland on Tuesday, in what could see negotiations on the Greenland crisis.
And Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni believed transatlantic ties could be salvaged.
"He [Trump] seemed interested in listening," she said on Sunday, while visiting Korea, after speaking to the US president by phone.
Irish taoiseach Micheál Martin also said on Sunday: "I think that [the ACI] is a bit premature today, but of course it may be put on the table".
"Be in no doubt that Europe will obviously retaliate if these tariffs are imposed," he added.
But senior Danish, Dutch, German, and Swedish politicians accused Trump of "blackmail" in a sign of the increasingly toxic atmosphere.
Macron implicitly put the US on a par with Russia as a threat to the EU in his remarks, saying: "No intimidation or threat can influence us, neither in Ukraine, nor in Greenland, nor anywhere else in the world."
And some EU leaders voiced fears that a US military invasion of its Nato ally remained a plausible scenario, depending how the trade clash ended.
"A US invasion of that territory would make [Russian president] Vladimir Putin the happiest man in the world. Why? Because it would legitimise his attempted invasion of Ukraine," said Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez in La Vanguardia newspaper on Sunday.
"If the United States were to use force, it would be the death knell for Nato. Putin would be doubly happy," said Sánchez.
The EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said on X that "China and Russia must be having a field day" watching the Nato infighting.
"We ... cannot let our dispute distract us from our core task of helping to end Russia's war against Ukraine," she added.
A Putin aide and US envoy, Kirill Dimitriev, said on X on Sunday the EU would abandon Greenland just like the German soldiers who flew home: "See, as predicted, already a very quick and efficient retreat. Abrupt and quiet".
Russian deputy security chief Dmitry Medvedev also voiced schadenfreude.
"Make America Great Again (MAGA) = Make Denmark Small Again (MDSA) = Make Europe Poor Again (MEPA). Has this idea finally sunk in, dimwits?," he said.
And Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua published an op-ed on Saturday entitled: "To be an enemy of America is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal."
Trump's tariff decision came despite a US agreement, made just last Wednesday, to convene a "high-level working group" with the Danish and Greenlandic governments, which was personally launched on a visit to Washington by Denmark's foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen.
Trump's news on Saturday had "come as a surprise" especially to Rasmussen himself, he said.
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Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.
Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.