It’s actually fairly common for mostly-autonomous overseas parts of an EU member state to not be part of the EU. The Dutch Caribbean and French Pacific islands have the same status as Greenland. They’re quite independent in terms of domestic policy and also not typically very close to Europe, so applying the EU’s laws to them is not always practical or useful. I believe they all have standing invites to join if they wish, though.
There’s actually a tiny exclave of Germany that is completely surrounded by Switzerland and is also not in the EU customs union, so sometimes it can happen on mainland Europe. Other EU stuff does apply in that exclave that does not in Greenland, so it’s not quite the same, but still
The two British military bases on Cyprus do still fall within the EU customs union despite being British Overseas Territories, so a tiny bit of the UK that sort of didn’t Brexit
There’s actually a tiny exclave of Germany that is completely surrounded by Switzerland and is also not in the EU customs union, so sometimes it can happen on mainland Europe.
Heligoland is not in the customs union either, they have their own tax regime. Or rather the federation has enabled Schleswig-Holstein to give Heligoland their own tax regime: No VAT, no usual alcohol, tobacco etc taxes, instead a municipal import tax is levied without which they’d have rather empty coffers. Or at least that was the situation before the renewable boom: They were reliant on duty-free tourism, now there’s plenty offshore wind maintenance to do.
…which, thinking about it, should mean that you can produce alcohol on the island and sell it completely tax-free. And they do have a whisky distillery.
Fun fact: The island is called, in the local Frisian dialect, “deät Lun”, “the land”. A whopping 1237 people on 4.2km2.
They’re an Overseas Country and thus not economically integrated into the EU, though they have a “most favoured third country” type status that is they will never be treated worse when it comes to tariffs and such than the best-treated non-member country.
OCT citizens are EU citizens so they have freedom of movement and everything, can even vote in EU elections as long as they happen to reside within ordinary EU territory. I think the French overseas territories even regularly vote in EU elections. It’s a clusterfuck of asterisks.
Most OCTs have that status because they’re so far away from the mainland that the trade they’re doing with the EU is a relatively small portion of their overall trade, that doesn’t really apply to Greenland they left over the EU fisheries policy. Which is also the reason the Faroer and Iceland aren’t in. It would also be the reason why Norway isn’t in if the actual reason wasn’t them being a rich petrostate. The fisheries policy really sucks.
They don’t count through Denmark? I’m curious, sorry if these questions are a duh.
It’s actually fairly common for mostly-autonomous overseas parts of an EU member state to not be part of the EU. The Dutch Caribbean and French Pacific islands have the same status as Greenland. They’re quite independent in terms of domestic policy and also not typically very close to Europe, so applying the EU’s laws to them is not always practical or useful. I believe they all have standing invites to join if they wish, though.
There’s actually a tiny exclave of Germany that is completely surrounded by Switzerland and is also not in the EU customs union, so sometimes it can happen on mainland Europe. Other EU stuff does apply in that exclave that does not in Greenland, so it’s not quite the same, but still
The two British military bases on Cyprus do still fall within the EU customs union despite being British Overseas Territories, so a tiny bit of the UK that sort of didn’t Brexit
Heligoland is not in the customs union either, they have their own tax regime. Or rather the federation has enabled Schleswig-Holstein to give Heligoland their own tax regime: No VAT, no usual alcohol, tobacco etc taxes, instead a municipal import tax is levied without which they’d have rather empty coffers. Or at least that was the situation before the renewable boom: They were reliant on duty-free tourism, now there’s plenty offshore wind maintenance to do.
…which, thinking about it, should mean that you can produce alcohol on the island and sell it completely tax-free. And they do have a whisky distillery.
Fun fact: The island is called, in the local Frisian dialect, “deät Lun”, “the land”. A whopping 1237 people on 4.2km2.
They’re an Overseas Country and thus not economically integrated into the EU, though they have a “most favoured third country” type status that is they will never be treated worse when it comes to tariffs and such than the best-treated non-member country.
OCT citizens are EU citizens so they have freedom of movement and everything, can even vote in EU elections as long as they happen to reside within ordinary EU territory. I think the French overseas territories even regularly vote in EU elections. It’s a clusterfuck of asterisks.
Most OCTs have that status because they’re so far away from the mainland that the trade they’re doing with the EU is a relatively small portion of their overall trade, that doesn’t really apply to Greenland they left over the EU fisheries policy. Which is also the reason the Faroer and Iceland aren’t in. It would also be the reason why Norway isn’t in if the actual reason wasn’t them being a rich petrostate. The fisheries policy really sucks.
No, the questions are not obviously answered. I don’t know.
This confusion might be why Trump thinks it’s free real estate.