Hungary’s prime minister promises to quickly ratify the NATO accession of Sweden, Finland
Hungary’s prime minister said his country would ratify NATO membership for Finland and Sweden within a month. The announcement was made during the meeting of the V4 regional group taking place in Košice, Slovakia.
“As far as NATO is concerned, the government has made the decision and we have informed Sweden and Finland that Hungary supports the membership of these two countries in NATO,” says Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Earlier in the day, his Polish counterpart, Mateusz Morawiecki, said he “asked Prime Minister Orbán to ratify Finland and Sweden’s entry into NATO as soon as possible,” and received “a promise that at the first parliamentary session of the new year […] the ratification will take place.”
The two Nordic countries’ decision to join the alliance after decades of neutrality was triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But since all NATO members pledge to help any other member in the event of an attack, unanimity is required to expand the alliance. Most NATO countries quickly welcomed Finland’s and Sweden’s decision and this time the accession process, which usually takes years of negotiations, has been sped up, although Hungary and Turkey have dragged their feet.
While the problem for Turkey lies in Sweden’s soft approach to Kurdish organizations, which Turkey considers terrorists and fights them both within its borders and in Syria, Hungary’s reluctance is widely seen as an unwillingness to antagonize Russia, which Budapest relies on for cheap energy resources. . Hungary’s reluctance has caused friction within the V4, whose other members (Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) are strongly supportive of Ukraine and enthusiastic about NATO expansion.
Even so, Orbán’s chief of staff already said on November 16 that Hungary will ratify Sweden and Finland’s accession to NATO before Turkey, where the Hungarian government has already submitted relevant legislation to parliament but without yet having scheduled the debate and vote.
source:
Reuters, PAP