Sweden expects Hungary to ratify its NATO membership soon
Sweden is demanding that Hungary ratify its NATO membership, following concerns that Budapest may try to use concessions for the rule of law and frozen EU funds in return.
Tobias Billström, Sweden’s foreign minister, told reporters in Stockholm on Wednesday (11 January) that they expect Budapest to start ratifying in February.
“We will see such a launch starting in early February. That’s the knowledge we have so far,” he said.
Hungary and Turkey is the only two NATO membersof 30, which have not yet approved Sweden and Finland for NATO membership.
Turkey wants Sweden to first extradite dozens of its political enemies who have sought asylum there in an increasingly ugly row.
But Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced last November that Hungary’s parliament would ratify NATO membership for Finland and Sweden at the beginning of the year, possibly in March.
Orbán’s Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó made similar comments.
But with Sweden making the rule of law one of its top priorities during its six-month rotating EU presidency, fears are growing that Budapest may abandon or continue to drag out the process.
Ágnes Vadai, shadow defense minister of the opposition Democratic Coalition Party in Budapest, told EUobserver that “the evidence [of a Nato-EU funds link] is that there is simply no other reason not to ratify.”
“We even work with Sweden and Finland in a special NATO program [called C17] and we have bought Swedish fighter planes, so we know them very well, she also said on Wednesday.
“Orbán has always said that it has nothing to do with it. But you should take it with a grain of salt, because he is a liar,” she said.
“It used to be said: “Maybe Orbán is delaying ratification to support [Turkish president Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan. But this does not hold water – the Turkish-Swedish dispute is in a league of its own. Erdoğan doesn’t need Orbán for this, so it’s either EU money, or worse, the Russians,” she added, referring to Orbán’s friendly ties with Erdoğan and with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who opposes NATO expansion.
Budapest has in the past already used its veto threat against EU-level decision-making amid proposals to freeze around 7.5 billion euros in EU payments due to suspected corruption in Orbán’s government.
Budapest blocked both an EU aid package of 18 billion euros for Ukraine and a minimum global corporate tax rate last December.
But one an agreement was then made to lower the suspended payment to 6.3 billion eurosin what Orbán spun as a win.
Other EU governments have also approved the country’s €5.8 billion recovery plan following the Covid pandemic.
But the money will not be released until Hungary completes 27 anti-corruption and judicial independence reforms.
The situation arose just before Sweden’s EU presidency, which has made legal certainty one of its top four priorities in the coming six months.
Sweden’s EU minister Jessika Roswall said the presidency will maintain the pressure “as long as there is a systematic threat to the rule of law in member states.”
She also welcomed last year’s agreement on the conditionality mechanism, which links EU funds to how the rule of law works in a member state.
The EU has sanctioned Orbán for curbing the independence of the judiciary and extensive misuse of EU funds.
But when pressed on Hungary, NATO ratification and the rule of law, she refused to make a connection.
“I see it as a parallel process. One of the priorities of the Swedish presidency is the rule of law. It is very crucial for Sweden. I don’t see that it will affect the NATO process,” she said.
The Swedish presidency plans to discuss the Hungarian and Polish cases in so-called general councils in March and April.