With an overwhelming majority
Hungary agrees to Finland joining NATO
03/27/2023, 8:31 p.m
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban has long stonewalled Finland’s request: now the parliament in Budapest has approved NATO membership. A vote on Sweden, on the other hand, has not yet made it onto the agenda.
After several postponements, the Hungarian parliament has ratified Finland’s NATO accession protocol with an overwhelming majority. 182 MPs voted in the evening for the adoption, six against. There were no abstentions. Hungary is the last NATO country besides Turkey to ratify Finland’s entry into NATO. Parliament has debated the analogous accession protocol for Sweden, but has not yet put the vote on it on the agenda.
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban appears to be in close coordination with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. So far, the latter has only approved Finland’s accession to NATO, but not Sweden’s. The right-wing populist Orban maintains a friendly relationship with Erdogan. Hungary is the only EU country with observer status in the Council of Turkic Peoples, which is dominated by Erdogan. The Hungarians themselves are not Turkic.
Orban, who makes all the key decisions in the country himself, has repeatedly spoken out in favor of the two Nordic countries joining NATO. At the same time, however, he repeatedly had the debate and vote on ratification postponed under various pretexts. Among other things, he complained that Swedish and Finnish politicians and the media had unjustly criticized Hungary for deficiencies in the rule of law and corruption.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland decided last year to apply for NATO membership after a long period of military non-alignment. Turkey, which currently has to agree as one of the 30 members, reported concerns from the outset. She accuses Sweden of a lack of action against “terrorist organizations”. Ankara is primarily concerned with the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party PKK.