A strong supporter of NATO and the European Union based upon his belief in Western cohesion, Ellemann-Jensen's stance led to many political battles with the left-wing opposition.

Uffe Ellemann-Jensen succeeded in convincing a majority in the Danish Parliament, the Folketinget, to actively support the U.S. led coalition against Iraq during the Gulf War.

In 1992, Ellemann-Jensen, together with his German colleague Hans-Dietrich Genscher, took the initiative to create the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) and the EuroFaculty.

[2] In September 1992, Ellemann-Jensen and other senior officials visited southern Somalia, one of the first foreign delegations to do so since the start of civil war there the year before.

Instead, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen (Social Democrats) was appointed prime minister following a "Queen's round", and Ellemann-Jensen became leader of the opposition.

Ellemann-Jensen became a central figure in the controversy following the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten's decision to print 12 satirical images of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in September 2005.

Ellemann-Jensen remained in that position all through the controversy at the same time never missing an opportunity to support the Danish Prime Minister's stance that the government could not and should not take punitive action against the newspaper.

[7] In a 2021 interview with Ellemann-Jensen, it was reported that an "old cancer [...] was stirring again",[a] and referring to his health problems, he stated that he was "a wandering example of medical science's progress".