Europe's empire is under siege.
The race for raw materials and strategic outposts on key routes has put several of Europe's foreign possessions, from the Arctic to the South Pacific, on the global chess board.
US President-elect Donald Trump has renewed his push to buy mineral-rich Greenland from Denmark; China ally Azerbaijan has tried to destabilise New Caledonia, a French territory coveted by Beijing for nickel deposits; and Germany's far-right AfD, with its Moscow links, wants the return of another French island, Mayotte, located off the eastern coast of Africa, to the Comoros.
The EU has 13 Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) across the Atlantic, Antarctic, Arctic, Caribbean, Indian, and Pacific regions – all of which are islands. These include Denmark's Greenland and the Netherlands' Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Eustatius, and Sint Maarten.
France oversees French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Wallis and Futuna, and the French Southern and Antarctic Territories – the latter being the only OCT without a permanent population.
Foreign powers often mask their true intentions by claiming to support anti-colonial movements.
Take Azerbaijan. Unhappy with France's support of Armenia, the so-called Baku Initiative Group was set up to fight colonialism and neo-colonialism, and representatives from various French territories were invited to seek independence.
In the case of New Caledonia, a genuine independence movement exists among the indigenous Kanak population. But this is not the case for every overseas territory.
