Hungarian parliament postpones voting on Sweden’s accession to NATO

  BUDAPEST:  Hungary’s parliament has turned down the opposition’s proposal to hold voting on Sweden’s accession to NATO this week, Agnes Va...

 

BUDAPEST:  Hungary’s parliament has turned down the opposition’s proposal to hold voting on Sweden’s accession to NATO this week, Agnes Vadai, a lawmaker with the Democratic Coalition party, said.

"No voting on Sweden’s accession to NATO will be held this week," she wrote on her Facebook account (Facebook is banned in Russia due to its ownership by Meta, which has been designated as extremist).

According to Vadai, lawmakers with the ruling Fidesz - Hungarian Civic Alliance party, which has the majority of seats in Hungary’s parliament, turned down the proposal to put this issue on the agenda.

Thus, this issue can be considered not earlier than November. The government submitted a relevant bill to parliament back in the summer of 2022 but lawmakers have been postponing its consideration ever since due to unfriendly remarks by Swedish politicians about Hungary.

Minister of the Hungarian Prime Minister's Office Gergely Gulyas hinted on Wednesday that Budapest still has claims to Stockholm. "We want to have normal, good relations with Sweden. And if we achieve them, there will be no obstacles for its accession," he said.

The protocol on Sweden’s accession to NATO has been ratified by 31 countries of the alliance, with Turkey and Hungary being the only ones not to have done so. On October 23, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan submitted the protocol on Sweden’s accession to NATO to national parliament. However, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said that his country’s lawmakers will not be oriented to their Turkish colleagues while considering this matter.

On March 27, Hungary’s parliament ratified the protocol on Finland’s accession of the North Atlantic Alliance but postponed the issue of Sweden’s membership.

The two Nordic countries applied for NATO membership in May 2022, saying that they had been prompted to take this step by the developments in Ukraine.

-News Feed