President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday France preferred "respect to bullies" and rejected "unacceptable" tariffs, following US President Donald Trump's threat to impose levies on countries opposing his plans to seize Greenland.

"France and Europe are attached to national sovereignty and independence, to the United Nations and to its charter," he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, as his US counterpart seeks to take over the Danish autonomous territory, and has invited countries around the world to a new global "Board of Peace".

"We will do our best in order to have a stronger Europe, much stronger and more autonomous," he said, wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses after appearing in public with a bloodshot eye last week.

"Here in the epicenter of this continent, we do believe that we need more growth, we need more stability in this world. But we do prefer respect to bullies.

"We do prefer science to (conspiracies) and we do prefer rule of law to brutality."

Warning of "a shift towards a world without rules", one "without effective collective governance" leading to "relentless competition", Macron said the European Union should not bend to "the law of the strongest" and that it was staggering the bloc was having to contemplate using its "anti-coercion instrument" against the United States.

Macron described "competition from the United States of America through trade agreements that undermine our export interests, demand maximum concessions, and openly aim to weaken and subordinate Europe". 

They were "combined with an endless accumulation of new tariffs that are fundamentally unacceptable - even more so when they are used as leverage against territorial sovereignty", he added.

Macron says no G7 meeting 'scheduled' this week

After the speech, Macron told reporters that there was no G7 summit scheduled this week, after US President Donald Trump revealed a message proposing a meeting on Ukraine and Greenland.

"No meeting is scheduled. The French presidency is willing to hold one," Macron told reporters.

Trump posted the "private message" from the French leader on his Truth Social network earlier on Tuesday. 

It came as European countries are weighing countermeasures after the US president threatened to impose tariffs on eight of them in an attempt to pressure the European Union over Greenland.

"My friend, we are totally in line on Syria. We can do great things on Iran. I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland," Macron said in his message.

"I can set up a G7 meeting after Davos in Paris on Thursday afternoon," Macron wrote, referring to this week's gathering of global elites in Switzerland.

"I can invite the Ukrainians, the Danish, the Syrians and the Russians in the margins" of the meeting, he added.

The G7 comprises Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States. The 27-nation EU also participates.

Asked whether Russia had received any invitation for the proposed meeting, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov replied: "No, it has not."

Trump's relations with Macron hit a new low on Monday when the US president threatened 200 percent tariffs on French wine over France's intention to decline an invitation to join his "Board of Peace".