CITES 2016, the Convention has 183 parties, including 182 states and the European Union. The CITES Convention includes provisions and rules for trade with non-Parties. All member states of the United Nations are party to the treaty, with the exception of Andorra, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Federated States of Micronesia, Haiti, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, South Sudan, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Turkmenistan, and Tuvalu. UN observer the Holy See is also not a member. The Faroe Islands, an autonomous country in the Kingdom of Denmark, is also treated as a non-Party to CITES (both the Danish mainland and Greenland are part of
Greenland–European Union relations EU. There was hope that the Icelandic negotiations on EU membership 2011–2013 could create an exception to the policy but the negotiations never got that far. "Gigantic Arctic possibilities" refers to natural resources such as mining. There is a very large iron deposit, Isua Iron Mine. Greenland can not finance the large cost of developing it and does not have such experience, so it has contracted a foreign company, which did not start to develop it because of low iron prices. Greenland is eligible for EU funding. Between 2007 and 2013, the EU allocated approximately €190 million, and between 2014