American access to information from Danish cables must be immediately closed, says Pelle Dragsted (EL).
Denmark’s controversial cable cooperation with the United States must be ended. And it can’t happen soon enough.
This is the assessment of the Unity Party, which believes that it must be the logical consequence of the many statements and actions that have come from the President of the United States, Donald Trump.
“We believe that we must immediately terminate this cable cooperation. It has always been objectionable, but with Trump in the White House, we believe that it has gone from objectionable to downright dangerous,” says political spokesman Pelle Dragsted (EL).
In recent years, it has emerged that Denmark and the United States have had a cooperation since the 1990s that allows the American security service, the NSA, to tap information from cables.
The agreement between the NSA and the Danish Defense Intelligence Agency was not officially confirmed for many years, but former Defense Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen (V) confirmed the collaboration in 2020, among others.
In October 2023, the Supreme Court did the same when a case was pending against Claus Hjort Frederiksen.
Among other things, the NSA has used the cable network to spy on Angela Merkel when she was Chancellor of Germany.
Pelle Dragsted refers to the fact that Donald Trump, after being inaugurated as president in January, has threatened to ‘steal Greenland off the backs of the Greenlanders’.
Dragsted also points out that, in his opinion, Donald Trump is failing Ukraine in the war against Russia, and that Trump and his allies have relations with politically very right-wing groups and parties.
In addition, the political rapporteur highlights that the US president is about to start a trade war between the US and Europe.
“In that situation, we believe it is deeply naive to continue to be helpful to Trump in harvesting intelligence and data through these cables,” says Pelle Dragsted.
“It has become a question of choosing sides. Do we side with Germany, Sweden and Norway and the countries that have been subjected to this surveillance, or do we side with Trump? We cannot credibly do both in the situation we are in,” he says.
Pelle Dragsted acknowledges that it will be politically awkward for Denmark to have to interrupt cable cooperation with the United States, which for years has been considered Denmark’s closest political ally.
“But the government will have to wake up and put all naivety aside,” he says.
ritzau
