The Hungarian Parliament approves Sweden’s accession to NATO. This brings to an end a year and a half of wrangling over NATO enlargement.
Sweden announced on 25 April 2022 that it would apply to join NATO, together with Finland. At that time, the two countries were promised swift accession. The application was officially submitted on 18 May 2022 and approved by NATO in July.
Sweden’s accession was blocked by two NATO members: Turkey and Hungary. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan first raised concerns about accession in November 2022. Hungary did not start to hesitate until March 2023, almost a year after announcing its intention to join.
The Turkish parliament finally approved the Swedish accession on 24 January 2024, after an agreement with the United States to buy 40 F-16 aircraft.
In March last year, the Hungarian parliament approved the accession of the Finns, but for almost a year it was not clear what Hungary’s problem was with the Swedes.In February 2023, the Fidesz-KDNP leaders announced that although they had submitted the draft legislation on ratification almost a year earlier, a debate had emerged in the parliamentary group on the accession. Nothing was actually revealed as to what exactly the substance of this debate was.
The Hungarian government has broken its promise. It has been said repeatedly that Hungary will not be the last to ratify Swedish accession. The debate was dragged on for another month, demanding that the Swedish prime minister visit Budapest. The Swedes had originally refused to do so, and would have met Viktor Orban during the EU summit. They finally did last Friday, when Ulf Kristersson travelled to Budapest and Orbán announced that the Hungarian armed forces would buy four Gripen aircraft from Sweden.
« We were poor, to put it so simply, when we bought the first Gripen we couldn’t buy as many as we needed. So the time came to extend our previous contract and to add to it. Today we have reached an agreement to add four more Gripen fighter-bomber aircraft to the Hungarian Defence Forces’ fleet, significantly increasing our military capability and further strengthening our ability to operate abroad.” said PM Orbán áfter the meeting with his Swedish counterpart.
What is really important, the Hungarian Prime Minister said, is that an agreement has been reached for Saab to carry out research with an artificial intelligence focus with the Hungarian Defence Innovation Research Institute.
