On Tuesday, Greenland's parliament approved a new law that prohibits political parties from accepting donations from foreign or anonymous sources. This decision comes after former U.S. President Donald Trump expressed interest in the U.S. acquiring Greenland, which is a large, resource-rich Arctic island owned by Denmark.

According to a translation of a Danish parliamentary paper describing the measure, the bill will go into force immediately and is intended to preserve Greenland's democratic integrity. “The bill must be seen in light of the geopolitical interests in Greenland and the current situation where representatives of an allied great power have expressed interest in taking over and controlling Greenland,” the document said. Trump stated he would not rule out using military action to take over Greenland before he began his second term in office on January 20, citing the necessity of doing so for the security of the United States. 

His oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., visited Greenland last month and told citizens, “We're going to treat you well.” Denmark has been a close ally of the United States for a long time and is one of the founding members of NATO. Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, hosts a large U.S. military base. Greenland covers a vast area of 2.17 million square kilometres (836,000 square miles), making it more than one-fifth the size of the United States. Despite its large size, it has a small population of about 57,000, according to the CIA World Factbook. 

Kent Fridberg, a senior legal officer at Greenland's parliament, told The Associated Press that he was unsure if any foreign donors had ever contributed to Greenland's political parties. He explained that the proposed bill was mainly a precautionary step. Fridberg also mentioned that some Russian politicians had shown a similar interest. He added that political parties in Greenland are mostly funded by public money. Additionally, domestic private contributions exceeding 200,000 Danish kroner (about $27,700) in total, or 20,000 kroner (roughly $2,770) from a single contributor, are prohibited from being received by any one party under the new policy.