The Diplomat
The People’s Party Parliamentary Group in Congress has presented a non-legislative motion urging the government of Pedro Sánchez to put pressure on Turkey and Hungary in order to speed up the ratification process for the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO.
The motion, presented in early February for debate in the Foreign Affairs Committee, indicates that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has “exponentially” increased the “challenges for the European security structure of the countries that are part of NATO and other allied countries, such as Sweden and Finland“, whose societies and their respective governments “have perceived their accession to the Atlantic Alliance as the best way to strengthen the collective European defense and thus contribute to the maintenance of peace, democracy and security of their States”.
According to the PP, these two countries “meet all the requirements to become full members, as they are democracies, with clear borders, good neighborly relations and with armed forces in tune with the Allies”. Moreover, following the NATO Summit held in Madrid in June 2022, “they reached an agreement with Turkey on deportations and extraditions of Kurdish militants persecuted by the Turkish state”, which cleared “the only major obstacle” to their accession to the Atlantic Alliance.
To achieve membership, the motion warns, “the unanimous consent of all 30 members is necessary”. This ratification process, “should have been completed by now, but the constant delays on the part of Turkey and Hungary are paralyzing the already agreed enlargement of the Atlantic Alliance”, despite the fact that “both Sweden and Finland are fulfilling all the commitments reached in the Tripartite Agreement with Turkey signed during the NATO Summit in Madrid”.
However, the Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “is again making its country’s ratification for the accession of the two Nordic countries conditional on the full implementation of all the commitments made by them before the Turkish elections in June 2023”. On the other hand, “Hungary continues its lengthy parliamentary process for such ratification” after having assured Viktor Orban’s government, in October 2022, “that the approval of the procedure for the accession of the two new partners would be given, at the latest, before mid-December 2022”.
For all of these reasons, the Popular Parliamentary Group’s Non-Law Proposition urges the Government to “demand that Turkey and Hungary immediately complete the legislative procedures to proceed with the ratification of Sweden and Finland as NATO members” and to “work together with the transatlantic allies to advance without further setbacks in the accession of Sweden and Finland as full members of the Atlantic Alliance”.
The motion also asks the Government to reiterate “the commitment to NATO as the basis for the collective defense of the allied states”, to intensify NATO’s Reinforced Forward Presence “in those member states closest to the conflict, such as Sweden and Finland, implementing common military exercises for an effective collective deterrence”, and to support “the Spanish troops working for peace and security within the NATO framework”.
