Hungary’s ruling party, Fidesz, has said it will support Finland and Sweden joining NATO.
We give our full support to the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO, the party’s faction in the Hungarian parliament said in a statement. Deputies of Fidesz occupy more than two-thirds of the seats in it.
This means that Sweden and Finland now only need Turkey’s consent to join NATO.
Turkey has not yet made a final decision; in February, Ankara announced that it was ready to accept Finland into the alliance, but not Sweden, where at the end of January local rightists publicly burned the Koran.
Deputies of the Finnish Parliament approved the accession of the country to the North Atlantic Alliance by a majority of votes. According to Reuters, 184 deputies out of 200 voted for Finland’s accession to NATO at a meeting on March 1, seven were against, and one abstained.
Finland and Sweden filed a joint application to join NATO shortly after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In order for new countries to be accepted into the alliance, the consent of all 30 states that are now members of NATO is required.
So far, only Hungary and Turkey have not approved the application of Sweden and Finland. On March 1, the Hungarian Parliament began the procedure for its approval. The Turkish authorities, in turn, put forward a number of conditions, declaring that after their implementation they would support Sweden’s entry into NATO. At the same time, Turkey made it clear that it is ready to support Finland if this country agrees to join the alliance not as part of a joint application with Sweden.
Source: Racurs
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