Analysis of: Luxembourg’s foreign minister plays down Ukraine’s 2027 EU membership prospect – Europe live
The Guardian | January 29, 2026
TL;DR
The EU faces converging pressures: US demands for Greenland, Ukraine's membership push, and migration crackdowns reveal an empire managing contradictions under imperialist pressure. Workers on all sides—Ukrainian refugees, African migrants, Greenlandic people—pay the price for capital's geopolitical chess.
Analytical Focus:Contradictions Historical Context Interconnections
This Guardian live blog captures a pivotal moment in European geopolitics where multiple crises converge to expose the contradictions of the EU as a subordinate imperialist bloc navigating between US hegemony and its own expansionist interests. The Greenland situation demonstrates how Denmark's formal sovereignty over the territory is being openly challenged by Washington's strategic imperatives—framed as 'preventive' measures against Russian and Chinese influence, but fundamentally about controlling Arctic shipping routes and resources as climate change opens new frontiers for capital accumulation. The Ukraine membership debate reveals a second contradiction: the EU's stated commitment to rule-of-law criteria (Copenhagen criteria) clashes with the geopolitical urgency of incorporating Ukraine as a buffer against Russia. Luxembourg's foreign minister openly rebukes Zelenskyy for issuing 'ultimatums,' exposing how even wartime solidarity has limits when it threatens the institutional coherence that protects existing member states' interests. Meanwhile, €145 million in humanitarian aid papers over the fundamental question of who benefits from Ukraine's integration—Western capital seeking access to Ukrainian agriculture and minerals, or Ukrainian workers facing reconstruction on neoliberal terms. The migration strategy announcement completes the picture: while the EU positions itself as defender of Ukrainian refugees, it simultaneously hardens its southern borders, outsourcing repression to North African states. This reveals the EU's selective humanitarianism—protection for those fleeing a geopolitically useful conflict, detention and deportation for those fleeing Western-backed destabilization in Africa. The listing of Iran's Revolutionary Guard as terrorists, timed with Trump's military threats, shows European foreign policy increasingly synchronized with American imperial objectives despite rhetoric of 'strategic autonomy.'
Class Dynamics
Actors: EU political-bureaucratic class, US imperial state apparatus, Ukrainian political leadership, European national bourgeoisies, African migrant workers, Ukrainian working class and refugees, Greenlandic population, North African client regimes, Danish monarchy
Beneficiaries: Western defense contractors expanding Arctic infrastructure, European capital seeking post-war Ukrainian market access, US military-industrial complex, North African governments receiving EU payments for border enforcement, EU bureaucracy expanding its competencies
Harmed Parties: Ukrainian civilians facing Russian bombardment, African migrants facing detention and deportation, Greenlandic people whose self-determination is bargaining chip, European workers funding military expansion over social services, Iranian civilians facing sanctions
The EU operates as a secondary imperialist bloc subordinate to US hegemony, evident in Denmark's inability to resist American pressure on Greenland despite NATO membership. Within the EU, core states (Germany, France, Luxembourg) dictate terms to aspiring members like Ukraine, while simultaneously outsourcing migration control to peripheral North African states through asymmetric deals exchanging 'aid' for repression.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: Arctic shipping routes becoming viable due to climate change, Ukrainian agricultural and mineral resources, European energy dependence and infrastructure vulnerability, Defense industry expansion requirements, Labor arbitrage through migration control
The scramble for Greenland reflects competition over emerging means of production (Arctic resources, shipping lanes) as climate crisis creates new accumulation frontiers. Ukraine's potential membership offers European capital access to cheap labor and fertile agricultural land for post-war reconstruction contracts. Migration policy manages the reserve army of labor—restricting flows to maintain wage discipline while enabling selective exploitation.
Resources at Stake: Greenland's rare earth minerals and strategic position, Ukrainian grain exports and industrial capacity, Arctic shipping route control, European energy infrastructure, Labor power of migrant populations
Historical Context
Precedents: 1941/1951 US-Denmark defense agreements establishing American Arctic presence, Post-2004 EU eastward expansion incorporating former Soviet bloc, EU migration deals with Turkey (2016) and Libya, Copenhagen criteria established 1993 as gatekeeping mechanism, Historical pattern of great power competition in Arctic (Cold War)
This represents a late-stage neoliberal crisis of legitimacy where multilateral institutions face pressure from resurgent great power competition. The EU's Copenhagen criteria, designed during post-Cold War triumphalism to manage orderly capitalist expansion eastward, now creates friction when geopolitical urgency demands faster integration. Similarly, the 'rules-based international order' rhetoric rings hollow as the US openly demands territorial concessions from a NATO ally, revealing rules apply only to competitors, never to hegemonic powers.
Contradictions
Primary: The EU cannot simultaneously maintain its legitimacy as a rules-based institution (Copenhagen criteria, territorial integrity) while adapting to a world where its primary ally openly violates those norms (Greenland demands) and geopolitical necessity demands exceptions (Ukraine fast-track).
Secondary: Humanitarian rhetoric toward Ukrainian refugees versus repressive posture toward African migrants, Strategic autonomy aspirations versus practical subordination to US policy (Iran sanctions alignment), National sovereignty claims versus pooled EU decision-making on migration and defense, Germany's call for reduced dependencies versus continued reliance on US security umbrella
These contradictions will likely intensify rather than resolve. The EU may grant Ukraine expedited membership with extensive transitional arrangements that delay substantive integration while claiming political victory. Greenland's status may shift toward greater US military presence short of formal annexation. Migration hardening will continue regardless of rhetoric. The fundamental contradiction—Europe as subordinate imperialist power—cannot resolve without either genuine strategic autonomy (requiring massive military investment) or acceptance of client-state status.
Global Interconnections
This cluster of crises reflects the broader transition from US-led unipolar order toward contested multipolarity. The Arctic, previously a strategic backwater, becomes central as climate change opens shipping routes and exposes resources—a material transformation driving the Greenland pressure. Ukraine represents the contested borderland where Western and Russian spheres collide, with the EU unable to secure its periphery without American backing. The migration hardening connects to the global consequences of imperialism: populations displaced by Western-backed conflicts and climate change (itself produced by core-country industrialization) seeking refuge in the metropole, only to be criminalized. The Iranian sanctions alignment demonstrates how EU 'human rights' discourse serves imperial coordination. While framed as response to protest repression, the timing—concurrent with Trump's military threats and nuclear deal collapse—reveals sanctions as economic warfare preparation rather than humanitarian intervention. The listing of the IRGC as terrorists, following US, Canadian, and Australian precedents, shows how 'terrorism' designations function as imperial coordination mechanisms rather than neutral legal categories.
Conclusion
For workers and progressive forces, this moment demands clarity about the EU's nature: not a humanitarian alternative to American empire, but a subordinate partner managing contradictions through selective humanitarianism, border violence, and institutional mystification. Solidarity with Ukrainian workers requires opposing both Russian aggression and the neoliberal reconstruction that will follow any peace settlement. Solidarity with migrants requires rejecting the humanitarian/economic migrant distinction that legitimizes deportation. The Greenland situation exposes NATO's true function—not collective defense but US power projection—which should inform debates about European 'strategic autonomy.' Any genuinely independent European path would require breaking from Atlantic structures, not merely supplementing them with European armies serving the same capital interests.
Suggested Reading
- Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by V.I. Lenin (1917) Lenin's analysis of how capitalist powers divide the world into spheres of influence directly illuminates the competition over Greenland and Ukraine as contested peripheries in inter-imperialist rivalry.
- The New Imperialism by David Harvey (2003) Harvey's concept of 'accumulation by dispossession' explains how crises drive capital toward new frontiers (Arctic resources) and how geopolitical competition intensifies during periods of stagnation.
- The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (1961) Fanon's analysis of colonial violence and the psychology of domination illuminates the EU's differential treatment of refugees based on their geopolitical utility, and the ongoing extraction from Global South populations.
- The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (2007) Klein's examination of how crises enable rapid neoliberal restructuring provides framework for understanding what post-war Ukraine reconstruction will likely entail for Ukrainian workers.