'Ratification will have to wait': EU pauses trade deal with US over Trump's Greenland tariffs

A long-awaited transatlantic trade deal between the European Union and the United States has been put on hold, after US President Donald Trump imposed fresh tariffs on European countries as part of his push to secure control over Greenland.

The decision to pause ratification was confirmed by senior members of the European Parliament, who said the new tariff measures have fundamentally altered the political context in which the agreement was due to be approved.

Siegfried Mureșan, a Member of the European Parliament, said lawmakers had been preparing to move ahead with ratification of the EU–US trade deal signed last July, which would have eliminated tariffs on American imports into the EU.

"We were supposed to ratify very soon in the European Parliament the EU-US trade deal from last July, reducing tariffs for imports from the US into the European Union to 0%. That ratification will have to wait a little longer in this new context," he wrote on X.

The trade agreement was signed by Trump and Ursula von der Leyen in July last year. It set US tariffs on EU imports at 15 percent, while the bloc agreed not to impose levies on American exports.

Confirmation that the European Parliament will not move forward with ratification has now thrown the future of that truce into uncertainty. 

In a statement, Manfred Weber, President of the European People's Party, said escalating tensions between Washington and Brussels had made approval politically impossible. "The EPP is in favor of the EU-U.S. trade deal, but given Donald Trump's threats regarding Greenland, approval is not possible at this stage," Weber wrote. "The 0 percent tariffs on U.S. products must be put on hold."

 

Karin Karlsbro, who serves as Renew Europe's coordinator on trade, said the deal would not secure sufficient backing when lawmakers meet this week. "I see no possibility for the European Parliament to give the green light to move forward with the tariff agreement when we take a decision on Wednesday," she told Politico.

Karlsbro said the EU must now prepare for a tougher response to Washington’s trade actions, including measures aimed directly at Sweden. "Instead, the EU must prepare to respond to President Trump’s tariff attacks, including those targeting Sweden," she said. "We cannot rule out either retaliatory tariffs or the use of the 'bazooka' if the pressure and coercion continue."

The pause comes after Trump announced new tariffs on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland, linking the measures explicitly to negotiations over Greenland.