BUDAPEST, March 27. /TASS/. Hungary's National Assembly (unicameral parliament) plans to approve Finland's accession to NATO on Monday. However, Hungarian deputies intend to make a decision on Sweden's NATO accession at a later time.
The March-April meeting agenda posted on the parliament's website includes bills concerning the admission of both Nordic countries to NATO. However, if the document concerning Finland is said to be reviewed and voted on, the same document concerning Sweden is marked as "In discussion of committee’s reports".
Earlier, the parliamentary faction of the ruling Fidesz - Hungarian Civic Union, together with its junior partners, the Christian Democratic People's Party, won an overwhelming majority of parliamentary seats. The faction decided to vote on Finland's membership on March 27. Its leader Mate Kocsis pointed out that all coalition members would "vote unanimously in favor." "The parliamentary group will decide on Sweden later," he added.
Get your own house in order
Kocsis did not explain what caused the delay or when the vote on Sweden could be expected. In recent months, Fidesz deputies have expressed discontent over the repeated criticism coming from Finnish and Swedish politicians about the state of democracy in Hungary and were now asking the country for a favor. The dispute should have been resolved by a parliamentary delegation that recently traveled from Budapest to Helsinki and Stockholm, but this did little to clear up the issue.
This was confirmed, among other things, by a social media post made on March 23 by Balazs Orban, political advisor and namesake of the Hungarian prime minister, in response to Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson's comment that he could not understand why the Hungarian parliament was dragging its feet on ratification. Orban quoted several clearly unfriendly statements from Scandinavian politicians, including one made by Kristersson himself to Hungary, adding, "Good morning, Sweden!"
On March 27, Balazs Orban went on to explain that political cooperation between the two countries in the European Union was very bad now, and it made one wonder what it would be like when they would have to cooperate in another international alliance, NATO. According to him, the Swedes must convince Hungarian deputies that there will be no such problems in the future. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban laid this out in a conversation with Kristersson during the March 23-24 EU summit in Brussels and warned that trying to put pressure on Hungary would only slow down the process. "As the saying goes, don't criticize others until you put your own house in order," the advisor added.
Budapest is not happy with Brussels
There was another allegation swirling around Budapest’s diplomatic circles about instability in the ruling party. Political observers noticed that the decision to vote on Finland on March 27 and postpone the vote on Sweden was made by the Fidesz faction immediately after Viktor Orban's trip to Ankara, where he met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey has begun the process of ratifying Finland's NATO membership agreement, but refuses to consider Sweden's application, accusing it of supporting Kurdish extremists. Although the head of the Hungarian Prime Minister's Office, Gergely Guyas, denied at a meeting with reporters that Budapest and Ankara had agreed on their positions as questions on the issue remained.
Diplomatic sources also do not rule out that Hungary, by dragging out the ratification process, is trying to show the EU and NATO leaders that it is extremely dissatisfied with the criticism, which started to sound in its address from Brussels. Earlier, the postponement of the voting in parliament was made at the request of the government, the main reason being negotiations in regards to European funds, which were due but not given to Hungary under a variety of pretexts.
Earlier, the government of the country, led by Orban, as well as Hungarian President Katalin Novak, supported the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO. A bill on the ratification of their accession protocols was submitted to parliament last summer by Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto. Finland and Sweden filed their applications on May 18 of last year, saying that they were urged to take this step by the events in Ukraine. Of all the 30 NATO countries, only Hungary and Turkey have not ratified their accession documents.