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.
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.