20 Europe The EconomistAugust 24th 2019
2 6%.Thatcouldyieldanuncompromising-
lyright-wing,nativist,Euroscepticgovern-
mentwithMrSalviniatitshelm.
AlthougheuofficialsseetheLeague’s
economic policies as marginally better
thanthose ofthem 5 s, it is“considered
worseforeverythingelse”,saysMujtaba
RahmanoftheEurasiaGroup,a consultan-
cy.TheLeagueopposeshumanitarianef-
fortstorescuemigrantscrossingtheMedi-
terranean.ItisclosetoRussia(oneofMr
Salvini’sassociateswasrecentlycaughton
tape discussing funding from Kremlin-
friendlyoilinterests).Anditisopposedto
theeurozone’s3%caponbudgetdeficits.
MrSalvinihaspromisedthat,if elected,he
willintroducebigtaxcutsinanattemptto
revive Italy’s stagnantgrowth.With Eu-
rope’seconomyslowing,a no-dealBrexit
loominganda newcommissionjustenter-
ingoffice,a victoryfortheLeaguecouldbe
a perfectstormfortheeu. Marketsmaybe
sanguine, but Italy’s politics could yet
wreakhavocintheeurozone. 7M
ost danesthought it was a joke when
Preisdent Donald Trump said Ameri-
ca might buy Greenland, a self-governing
island that forms 98% of Danish territory.
Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederik-
sen, dismissed the idea as “absurd”. When
Mr Trump reacted by calling her “nasty”
and cancelling a visit to Copenhagen, his
would-be hosts were stunned. But many
Greenlanders were not.
“I knew from the start this was to be tak-
en seriously,” says Aleqa Hammond, a for-
mer prime minister of Greenland. It was
not the first time an American president
had suggested such a purchase. In 1946
Harry Truman offered $100m for Green-
land ($1.3bn in today’s money).
Today the island has only 57,000 inhab-
itants, yet it is of growing strategic impor-
tance, as Russian submarines reappear in
the Arctic and China dreams of a “polar silk
route” through newly ice-free seas. Den-
mark is responsible for Greenland’s exter-
nal affairs and defence. natomembership
once allowed Greenlanders to sleep easy,
but since Mr Trump has undermined that
alliance, their security is less certain.
Greenland’s feisty legislators, including
Kim Kielsen, the current prime minister,
all agree that the island’s sovereignty is not
for sale. But they are flattered that outsid-
ers are interested, and insist on their rightto parley with all comers. As Ms Hammond
says: “If Mr Trump wants to discuss Green-
land, let him come here, not to Denmark.”
As Mr Trump observed, Danish taxpay-
ers send Greenland more than $600m a
year in subsidies. But that dependence
does not deter the island’s politicians from
pursuing their own bargains. Last year Mr
Kielsen found Chinese contractors for an
upgrade to the island’s airports. That terri-
fied nato, and Denmark pressed Green-
land to find Danish contractors instead.
One of the parties in Mr Kielsen’s coalition
marched out in protest. Greenlanders who
want independence say that widening the
range of economic partners could wean
them off Danish aid.
Aqqaluk Lynge, a veteran leftist, said the
spat with Mr Trump might make Danes and
Greenlanders appreciate one another
more. It might, for example, remind Danes
who moan about subsidising their Arctic
cousins not to take them for granted.
Today Greenland exports mostly sea-
food. When Mr Trump joked that he did not
want to build a skyscraper with his name
on it in Greenland (see picture), he was
surely telling the truth. The real economic
opportunity is that vanishing glaciers are
opening up its mineral resources, includ-
ing rare earths and possibly oil and gas. Mi-
nik Rosing, a Greenland-born geologist,
noted the irony in a man who once called
global warming a “hoax” coveting territory
that owes its rising value to melting snows.
Yet he also thinks a more tactful American
leader might persuade Greenlanders to up-
grade their links with the United States at
the expense of their Danish ones.
Perhaps. But were they ever to decide to
become part of America, which for now
seems highly unlikely, they would get a
culture shock. Not only do Greenlanders
have Nordic ideas about social welfare;
they also ban private ownership of land. 7How Greenlanders feel about Donald
Trump’s talk of buying their landPresidential rudenessArctic antics
It ain’t easy being GreenlandV
ital almeidais on the hunt for work-
ers. The boss of Ciclo Fapril, a firm that
makes metal components for foreign
manufacturers, needs to hire 200 staff by
the end of the year to meet new orders. But
luring workers—even unskilled ones—to
Agueda, a rural town in central Portugal, is
proving difficult. To attract more, he is run-
ning open days, setting up internships and
building relationships with local schools.
This is a far cry from the state of affairs
just over a decade ago, when the global fi-
nancial crisis struck. Many of Mr Almeida’s
neighbours, also metal-bashers, were
forced to close down. He weathered the
drought by closing the factory on Friday af-
ternoons and freezing pay.
As southern Europe was racked by the
crisis, joblessness rose dramatically. Un-
employment rates in Spain and Greece ex-
ceeded 25%; youth rates neared 60% (see
chart). Populations shrank as many left
home in search of better fortunes abroad.
These trends have reversed since 2015,
when economic recovery took hold. In the
euro area nearly 8m jobs have been created,
one for every 20 adults of working age. The
unemployment rate has returned to pre-
crisis levels, even as the pool of available
workers has grown. Older people are work-
ing longer: nearly two-thirds of 55- to 64-
year-olds in the euro zone are in the labour
market, compared with less than half in- In southern Europe, net migration
has turned positive.
Even so, the labour-market recovery in
the south has further to go. Unemployment
rates are above pre-crisis levels in Greece,
Italy and Spain; youth rates are still
30-40%. Part of the explanation is anaemic
economic growth. In Greece and Italy, out-
put is still below pre-crisis peaks.
But in Spain, despite an impressive eco-
nomic recovery, 1m more people are still
out of work than in 2008. Comparisons
with the years immediately before the cri-
sis are tricky, because Spain was enjoying a
construction boom and unemployment
may have been unsustainably low. But
Marcel Jansen of Fedea, a think-tank in Ma-
drid, also points the finger at under-
performing job centres and schools.
Nearly 40% of Spain’s unemployed
have been jobless for over a year, and need
well-designed programmes to get them
back into work. But the country’s employ-
ment services are run by regional authori-
ties with little central co-ordination. In
AGUEDA AND MADRID
Why southern Europe’s labour markets
are still fragileEuropean unemploymentWork in progress
1