Status: 11/24/2022 9:31 p.m
Hungary has postponed the ratification of Sweden and Finland’s NATO accession until 2023. One stands by the “allies,” said Orban’s chief of staff Gulyas. But first the anti-corruption reforms would have to be passed.
Hungary intends to wait until next year to ratify Sweden’s and Finland’s accession to NATO. “As we have already informed Sweden and Finland, Hungary supports the NATO membership of these two countries,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told journalists. Ratification will be on the agenda for next year’s first session of Parliament, he said. This should start in February.
All alliance members must agree to the admission of the two Nordic countries to NATO. Apart from Hungary and Turkey, all NATO member states have already opened the way for Sweden and Finland to join the alliance. After the Russian attack on Ukraine, Sweden and Finland broke with their decades-long tradition of military alliance neutrality and applied for NATO membership in May.
First anti-corruption reform
Hungary’s ruling party, Fidesz, has repeatedly refused to schedule a parliamentary vote on the issue, despite stressing that it supports the two countries’ entry into NATO. At the beginning of November, Orban’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, said that Hungary would first have to pass the anti-corruption reforms proposed by Brussels before parliament could turn to the NATO issue. “The Finns and the Swedes are our allies and just as we can rely on our allies, they can also rely on us,” Gulyas said, adding that he had “no objections” to their joining.
EU member Hungary is negotiating with Brussels over the release of billions of dollars in EU funds to the country, which are currently being held up over corruption concerns. The opposition had repeatedly called for NATO ratification to be put on the agenda. The Socialist Party called the refusal “incomprehensible and unjustified”, while the Momentum movement accused the government of “blackmailing” Brussels.
Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki assured that Orban had promised his counterparts at a meeting with the heads of government of Slovakia and the Czech Republic that ratification would be on the agenda at the first parliamentary session after the turn of the year. “So ratification will come in about a month or two,” TASR quoted the Polish Prime Minister as saying.