Danes side with US against French criticism of defence deal
23 September 2021, 11:34
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she cannot understand the French position as challenges will always exist between allies.
Denmark is siding with the United States in the dispute with its fellow EU member France over a major Indo-Pacific defence deal.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a newspaper interview that she wants to warn against turning “concrete challenges, which will always exist between allies, into something they should not be”.
France has reacted strongly to the deal between the US, Britain and Australia. As part of it, Australia will cancel a multibillion-dollar contract to buy diesel-electric French submarines and acquire US nuclear-powered vessels instead.
The French government is suggesting it was betrayed by the deal, and on Tuesday, the EU agreed to put the dispute at the top of the bloc’s political agenda.
“In the light of the discussions that are taking place right now in Europe, I think it is important to say that I experience (US President Joe) Biden as very loyal to the transatlantic alliance,” Frederiksen told Danish newspaper Politiken.
Asked whether she can understand the French criticism, Frederiksen replied: “No, I cannot. I do not understand that at all.”
She stressed that that did not mean Denmark agreed with the US on everything.
“We have said that we would have liked to see another exit from Afghanistan,” she said. “But I have no frustrations at all in relation to the new American administration.”
Denmark, a NATO member, has been a staunch supporter of the US. It backed the war in Iraq and maintained some 12,000 soldiers in Afghanistan from 2002 until the US withdrawal this year.
