BUDAPEST, July 14. /TASS/. Hungary will ratify the agreement on Sweden’s accession to NATO before Turkey does so, but this will not happen tomorrow, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Friday.
"We support Sweden’s membership in NATO," he said after talks with his visiting Bosnian counterpart, Elmedin Konakovic.
According to Szijjarto, the Hungarian government laid bare its position on this matter quite a long time ago. "If we were against it, we would not have submitted a ratification document to the parliament," he stressed.
"The latest statements clearly indicate that the ratification process in Turkey will not be completed tomorrow. So, our previous promise that we will not be the last to do so of course still stands," he said, adding that Hungary’s parliament will hold voting on this matter in the fall, like the Turkish parliament, since the spring session of the Hungarian parliament is already over and the parliament will meet again on September 25.
Turkey’s parliament will resume its work after summer vacation ends on October 1. This means that the Turkish government will have two and a half months to see how Sweden, the United States, and the European Union are fulfilling their commitments as part of the agreement that Ankara would drop its objections against Sweden’s membership in NATO. In particular, Turkey wants to continue the process of integration into the European Union.
Budapest, in turn, makes no secret of the fact that it is coordinating its actions with Ankara. Hungary’s parliament also made it clear that it would address Sweden’s bid only in the fall and would not call an extraordinary session. "I see no need for this," Zsolt Meneth, head of the parliamentary committee on international affairs, told the Inforadio program on Thursday.
The Hungarian side said earlier that it would not hinder Sweden’s accession to the North Atlantic alliance and "will not be the last to ratify such an agreement." On March 27, Hungary’s parliament ratified the agreement on Finland’s accession to NATO but postponed the consideration of Sweden’s membership bid.
Finland and Sweden applied for NATO membership on May 18, 2022, saying they made such a move because of what is going on around Ukraine.