35 years after the ‘Grøxit’-referendum: Why the EU still plays an important role for Greenlandic diplomacy

In 1982, Greenland convened a referendum that paved the way to eventually leaving the European Communities three years later. ‘Grøxit’ - a portmanteau of Grønland, the Danish translation of Greenland, and exit, applied here since ‘Grexit’ is already preoccupied by Greece in EU-jargon – gained some scholarly, comparative interest in the aftermath of the British exit-referendum from the EU in June 2016, commonly known as ‘Brexit’. However, while many has either stressed the minor resemblances or, more commonly, the big differences in the two ‘exit-cases’, the analyses of the Greenlandic case generally rest on very rudimentary archive studies, content analyses, or revisiting the few mainly descriptive sources from the 1970-80s. In other words, the very first ‘exit-case’ from the EU calls for elaborations. Furthermore, process tracing the developments since shows a paradoxical development. While events leading up the 1982-vote spurred a ‘Greenlandic Spring’ in terms of political awakening on the world’s largest island, the EU still plays a vital role in Greenland’s diplomatic conducts and economic affairs. The purpose of this paper is, thus, twofold: First, to scratch beyond the surface of the 1982-referendum and provide a more theoretically founded and methodological vigorous analysis of the ballot. Second, to trace the developments in Greenland-EU relations since the mid-1980’ in order to gain a more elaborated understanding of the case 35 years after ‘Grøxit’.