Eduardo González
The Popular Parliamentary Group in the Congress of Deputies has urged the Government of Pedro Sánchez to “exhort” the Hungarian Government of Viktor Orbán to ratify the Protocol to the North Atlantic Treaty on the accession of Sweden to NATO, adopted in Brussels in July 2022 in compliance with what was agreed at the Madrid Summit in June of that year.
In a Non-Law Proposal presented on February 2 for debate in Plenary, the PP recalls that “soon will be 75 years since the creation of NATO” and that Spain joined this organization on May 30, 1982. “It was the third enlargement, since Greece and Turkey had joined the twelve initial members in 1952 and Germany in 1955,” continues the PP, which also recalls that, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, “there have been other six more enlargements, which have meant the entry into NATO of countries that had been signatories of the Warsaw Pact as well as several former Yugoslav republics.”
“This process of incorporation of the countries that had belonged to the Soviet orbit began precisely at the NATO Summit in Madrid in 1997, when the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland were invited to join the organization,” and it was “again in Madrid”, at the NATO Summit on June 29 and 30, 2022 when “it was agreed to invite Sweden and Finland to become part of the organization,” the motion continues.
However, it regrets, only Finland “has been able to join NATO to date,” while “the procedures for Sweden’s admission to the Alliance have been completed throughout the year and a half that has passed since its invitation.” formal”. In the case of Spain, the PP recalls, the ratification process of the Accession Protocol of the two countries “lasted less than three months” and, in fact, on September 26, 2022, “the King issued the instruments of ratification, with the endorsement of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, both of the accession of Finland and of Sweden.”
However, “this process has been especially lengthy in the cases of Hungary and Turkey.” “Despite the vicissitudes, on January 23, 2024, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey ratified by a very large majority the accession of Sweden to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” he continues. “Therefore, at this moment, of the thirty-one members that make up NATO, all have completed the internal procedures to authorize accession, with the sole exception of Hungary,” it adds. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has shown a rather fractious attitude towards Russia and the war in Ukraine almost from the beginning, both within the EU and NATO.
For this reason, the Non-Law Proposal urges the Government to “urge Hungary to ratify the Protocol to the North Atlantic Treaty on the accession of the Kingdom of Sweden, made in Brussels on July 5, 2022.” Exactly a year ago, the Popular Group presented another non-law Proposal in which the Government was urged to pressure Turkey and Hungary to “immediately complete the legislative procedures to proceed with the ratification of Sweden and Finland as members of the NATO”.
