Sweden and Finland complete NATO membership in “months” – The Irish Times
Finland and Sweden will be full-fledged members of NATO within “months”, its secretary general said on Tuesday, as member states signed an accession document as an important step forward in its expansion in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
Adding the Nordic states to the military alliance requires ratification by each of its 30 member states. The last time a state joined NATO, the process took a year, but the Alliance’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg estimated that this time the ratification would take “months”.
“I welcome the fact that many allies have already begun and announced that they will do so [more] faster than normal because they see the importance of a fast accession process, ”Stoltenberg said at a press conference with the Swedish and Finnish foreign ministers. “This is the fastest accession process in NATO’s history to date as it is only seven weeks since the accession applications were submitted to NATO.”
The chairman of the Estonian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Marko Mihkelson, said that Parliament was ready to gather to ratify Sweden and Finland’s membership as soon as Wednesday.
However, there is still a risk that the process could be delayed by the Turkish Parliament. Turkey lifted its veto on accession after the three states signed an agreement at a NATO summit in Madrid last week, where Sweden and Finland agreed to work more closely together to fight terrorism and confirmed that they had no embargo on arms sales to Turkey.
Ankara had accused Helsinki and Stockholm of helping Kurdish militant groups. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu warned that Turkey would hold Sweden and Finland to the agreement in order to allow the accession process to go through. “They must follow this document. If they do not, we will not allow them to join NATO,” he told local television NTV.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan claimed after the agreement was signed that Sweden had promised to extradite 73 people he described as “terrorists”, and the Turkish local pro-government press published a list of the names of those wanted.
But Sweden’s Foreign Minister Ann Linde denied on Tuesday that any list of people to be extradited had been discussed in the negotiations with Turkey. Her government would increase cooperation with Turkey, she told reporters, but all petitions for extradition would go to court under Swedish law.
“As you can see, there is no mention of any lists or figures in the memorandum, and during our negotiations in Madrid, there was no mention of any figures or specific lists,” Linde said. “In the memorandum, we assured Turkey that we will take the fight against terrorism seriously, and all requests for extradition will go the normal way.”
Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto added: “We fully follow the process and legal process of our authorities, and also the decisions of our courts on this.”
Several NATO member countries have offered Finland and Sweden security guarantees while their membership is in progress, and NATO has increased its exercises in the region. The signing of the Accession Protocol means that they now have the status of “invited” NATO and will participate in the Alliance’s discussions.
The application to join NATO came after the invasion of Ukraine caused a marked change in public opinion about security in the two states near Russia’s border. It increases NATO’s military presence in the strategically important Baltic Sea and has led to a closer overlap of the NATO Alliance and membership of the European Union, with Austria, Cyprus, Ireland and Malta as the remaining non-NATO members.