The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, was received yesterday in Brussels by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, with whom he discussed the situation in Ukraine, the southern neighborhood and “the imminent accession of Finland”.
The meeting took place on the eve of the NATO Ministerial Meeting, which is being held today and tomorrow at NATO headquarters in Brussels and will be chaired by Stoltenberg. “We discussed Ukraine, the southern neighborhood and the enlargement of the Alliance and the imminent accession of Finland,” Albares stated via his official Twitter account. “Spain is committed to European and Euro-Atlantic security,” he added.
The ministerial meeting will take place a few days after the Turkish National Assembly’s decision to ratify Finland’s NATO membership and the 30 member states of the Atlantic Alliance gave their blessing to the incorporation of a country characterized, for years, by its refusal to align itself militarily. With this accession, NATO will add more than 1,300 kilometers to its border with Russia.
In this respect, Jens Stoltenberg declared last Friday his “satisfaction” with this news, which “will make Finland more secure and NATO stronger”, and specified that Finland’s official entry into the Alliance could take place “in the next few days”.
