European officials have warned Donald Trump against threatening “sovereign borders” after the US President-elect refused to rule out military action to seize Greenland.

The rebukes on Wednesday were led by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who said the principle of inviolability of borders applies to every country, no matter how powerful.

He added Trump’s statements a day earlier had sparked “notable incomprehension” among other European Union leaders he had spoken with.

“Borders must not be moved by force. This principle applies to every country, whether in the East or the West,” Scholz later wrote on X.

“In talks with our European partners, there is an uneasiness regarding recent statements from the US. It is clear: We must stand together.”

France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, also weighed in on Wednesday, saying Greenland was “European territory” and there was “no question of the EU letting other nations in the world, whoever they may be … attack its sovereign borders”.

EU officials, meanwhile, largely sought to avoid wading into the morass, although a spokesperson did confirm to reporters that Greenland was covered by a mutual defence clause binding its members to assist one another in case of attack.

“But we are indeed speaking of something extremely theoretical on which we will not want to elaborate,” EU Commission spokesperson Paula Pinho said.

‘We need Greenland’

The disquiet comes after Trump on Tuesday again floated his desire for the US to take control of Greenland as well as the Panama Canal, an arterial Latin American water route that the US ceded control of to Panama in 1999.

When asked by a reporter if he would rule out using military force or economic coercion to gain that control, Trump replied, “I’m not going to commit to that.”

“We need Greenland for national security purposes,” Trump later said, nodding to the island’s strategic position in the Arctic, where Russia, China and the US have jockeyed for control in recent years.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, French government spokesperson Sophie Primas warned there was a “form of imperialism” in Trump’s statements.

“Today, we are seeing the rise in blocs, we can see this as a form of imperialism, which materialises itself in the statements that we saw from Mr Trump on the annexation of an entire territory,” she said.

“More than ever, we and our European partners need to be conscious, to get away from a form of naivety, to protect ourselves, to rearm,” she added.

For his part, Greenland’s Prime Minister, Mute Bourup Egede has not weighed in on the US president-elect’s most recent comments. However, Mute, who supports full independence from Denmark, has previously opposed Trump’s past suggestions of purchasing the island.

Officials in Denmark, meanwhile, struck a more conciliatory tone than their European counterparts.

Foreign minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said Copenhagen is “open to a dialogue with the Americans on how we can cooperate, possibly even more closely than we already do, to ensure that American ambitions are fulfilled”.

However, he also ruled out the island becoming part of the US.

‘Mexican America’

Europeans were not the only ones rankled by the broad expansionist vision laid out by Trump, who takes office on January 20.

On Wednesday, Canadian Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc condemned the president-elect for repeatedly saying he would seek to make Canada the “51st” state. On Wednesday, Trump said he was open to using economic coercion to make that happen.

“The joke is over,” said LeBlanc, who serves as the point person for US-Canada relations.

“It’s a way for him, I think, to sow confusion, to agitate people, to create chaos knowing this will never happen.”

Meanwhile, Mexico responded to Trump’s stated desire to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”.

President Claudia Sheinbaum suggested the whole of North America – including the United States – should be renamed “Mexican America”, referencing an historical name used in an early map of the region.

“Mexican America, that sounds nice,” Sheinbaum chided.