FILE PHOTO: U.S. Army equipment being returned from Esbjerg Harbor, during Operation Raven Assistor in Denmark, April 3, 2025. Cargo ships received by Danish and American military personnel are used for the planned repatriation of U.S. Army equipment and materials that have been used in exercise activities on NATO's eastern flank. Ritzau Scanpix/Bo Amstrup via REUTERS/File Photo
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark's parliament on Friday took an important step towards ratifying a defence cooperation deal with the United States that expands the U.S. military's rights in the Nordic country despite a diplomatic dispute over Greenland.
Recent opinion polls have shown significant opposition among Danes to the 10-year pact which, if ratified, would grant the U.S. military broad access to station troops and store equipment on Danish soil.
U.S. President Donald Trump's insistence that the United States take over Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, for security reasons has soured relations between the two traditionally close NATO allies.
The Danish and Greenland governments have both ruled out yielding the huge, resource-rich Arctic island to U.S. control.
But despite the dispute, the Danish government, which signed the bilateral cooperation deal in 2023, when Joe Biden was U.S. president, has said it is critical to bolstering Denmark's defences at a time when Russia is regarded as an increasing threat to Europe due to its three-year-old war in Ukraine.
On Friday the Danish parliament held the first of three readings of the bill before a final vote expected by end-June.
A lawmaker representing Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen's Social Democratic party defended the deal.
"It would be decidedly unwise to push the United States away by throwing the most important defence agreement in many years straight into the bin," Simon Kollerup said.
"The reality is that we have built the defence of Europe on our NATO membership," Frederiksen said in a similar message on Tuesday. "We want to hold on to that."
The left-wing Alternative and Red-Green Alliance parties have indicated their opposition to the deal, though it is expected to pass thanks to support for the minority government's proposal from several other opposition parties.
The deal does not cover Greenland itself, where the U.S. already enjoys wide access through a 1950s defence pact, or the Faroe Islands, another Danish territory in the North Atlantic.
Finland, Sweden and Norway have also signed bilateral defence pacts with the United States in recent years.
(Reporting by Stine Jacobsen and Isabelle Yr Carlsson in Copenhagen; editing by Terje Solsvik in Oslo and Mark Heinrich)
