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Sweden’s Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said Stockholm hopes that Hungary will soon approve its NATO membership bid.
Hungary remains the last holdout to ratify the Nordic country’s bid to join the military alliance, launched after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“It is important to see Hungary finalizing the ratification process with the voting of the Hungarian parliament being necessary to achieve this,” Billstrom told a news conference on Wednesday.
“The Hungarian parliament opens on the Feb. 26, in just a couple of weeks time, and we expect this to come through at that moment,” Billstrom added.
The Swedish minister reiterated there would be no negotiations on the ratification despite Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban inviting his Swedish counterpart Ulf Kristersson to “negotiate” Sweden’s accession.
“There is nothing to negotiate, if there is a visit, it’s not going to be a negotiation, that has been made very clear by my prime minister,” the Swedish minister added.
Although it supports Stockholm in principle, Budapest prolonged the process by asking Sweden to stop “vilifying” the Hungarian government.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, Sweden announced its application to join NATO in May 2022, at the same time as Finland, which became the organization’s 31st member in April 2023.
Last month, Türkiye’s Parliament passed a bill backing Sweden’s NATO accession bid and cleared a last major hurdle for the Nordic country to join the Western bloc after 20 months of delays that strained the ties between Ankara and some Western allies.
