HUNGARY: Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Hungarian Parliament ratified the NATO membership of Finland on Monday following months of delays that were quintessentially diplomatic in nature. 182 lawmakers against six strengthened the accession of the Nordic countries into a military pact. A total of 29 out of 30 NATO member state parliaments have voted for the accession of Finland.
At the June 2022 NATO summit, their applications were brought to the limelight, but ratification of the bids was necessary from all alliance member parliaments. When it reached Turkey and Hungary, the process came to a standstill.
The Finnish Prime Minister, Sanna Marin, mentioned on Twitter after the vote, “Thank you for the decision with clear numbers!” Finland expands for about 1,340 kilometres along its border with Russia, and the bloc’s current frontier with Russia would almost double with the pact intensifying.
Initially, Finland wanted to form an alliance with Sweden, a fellow NATO aspirant. Marin stated, “The NATO membership of Finland and Sweden will strengthen the security of the whole Alliance,” adding, “It is in everyone’s interest that Sweden also becomes a member of NATO before the Vilnius Summit.”
Almost ten years of military non-alignment were terminated by Helsinki and Stockholm, who in turn decided to coalesce with the most powerful defence alliance in the world at the time of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Orban had established healthy relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin until the invasion. He mentioned in December that the process of ratification would commence in February. Orban’s nationalist party was accused by the Hungarian opposition of endeavouring to put pressure on the bloc by ignoring to put the issue on the agenda of the parliament to vote.
The leader of the opposition party, Ferenc Gerencser, in light of Monday’s vote, said that Finland’s delay in the vote “served the interests of Putin.” Stronger actions are being called for in Stockholm by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan against Kurdish activists that Ankara considers “terrorists”.
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