Hungary can ratify Sweden’s NATO bid as soon as Feb 26, Orban says

Hungary can ratify Sweden’s NATO bid as soon as February 26 when the country’s parliament reconvenes, Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced on Saturday.

“Together with the Swedish Prime Minister, we have done important steps to restore confidence,” Orban said during an annual state of the nation address. “We are going in the direction that, at the start of parliament’s spring session, we can ratify Sweden’s accession to NATO.”

According to the Hungarian government’s website, the parliament reconvenes for its spring session on February 26.

Hungary is the last NATO member to approve Sweden’s accession to the military alliance.

Last June, Orban’s party Fidesz told CNN that it expected Sweden to “allay its concerns” before the vote on Sweden’s accession to NATO. In July, Fidesz told CNN that “Swedish government figures have regularly insulted Hungarian voters and Hungary as a whole.”

But in January, Orban said he told NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg he “reaffirmed that the Hungarian government supports the NATO membership of Sweden.”

Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership in May 2022, swiftly after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine earlier that year. Finland joined NATO in April 2023 – doubling the alliance’s border with Russia – but Sweden’s bid was mired in challenges.

Orban, considered to be the European Union leader closest to Russian President Vladimir Putin, initially indicated he was not opposed to Sweden joining the bloc, before working to stall it. Katalin Cseh, a Hungarian Member of the European Parliament, said last year that Orban’s blocking of Sweden’s bid was “quite simply, another favor to Vladimir Putin.”

But following a decision by leaders in Turkey earlier this year to approve Sweden’s accession to the alliance, leaving Hungary as the only holdout, Orban took steps to allow the process to move forward.