Hungarian vote on Swedish-Finnish NATO accession delayed further: Parliament to vote on March 20th

The Hungarian Parliament's vote on the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO could be delayed by another two weeks: under the new session schedule adopted on Thursday, Parliament will decide on the enlargement on 20 March instead of next week. The Hungarian government has been delaying the parliamentary ratification of the Swedish-Finnish NATO accession for more than half a year now, citing various reasons.

In his latest radio interview, Viktor Orbán said that a dispute had arisen at the Balatonfüred parliamentary group meeting on the issue, so a parliamentary negotiating delegation led by former Defense Minister Csaba Hende and Zsolt Németh, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, would be sent to the two countries.

According to Momentum's Dávid Bedő, at Thursday morning's meeting of the House committee, Fidesz faction leader György Balla said that it wasn't certain that the proposal would be passed in Parliament next week, and they hope that after the visits to Sweden and Finland they will be able to convince the majority of government MPs to vote in its favour.

The outcome of the negotiations will not have a serious impact on the government's position, as Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, for example, has made it clear that they support Finland and Sweden's accession to NATO.

The President of the Republic also indicated that it was time to ratify the two countries' accession application. Katalin Novák called the accession of the two countries justified. "I trust that Parliament will make a wise decision as soon as possible." – she wrote.

The proposals on ratification, which the Foreign Ministry submitted to Parliament on 14 July last year were debated by MPs on Wednesday. In the debate, which lasted four hours, the members of the governing parties listed at length the ways in which some representatives of Finland and Sweden had "insulted" Hungary. Among other things, they were offended by the fact that countries whose MEPs wanted to deny Hungary access to EU money are now asking for favours. They justified their sending a negotiating delegation to address such disputes.

In order for the two countries to become full members of the military alliance, the approval of the parliaments of all 30 member states is needed. This was done by 28 member countries by the end of September last year but not by the Hungarian parliament, although it has had the opportunity to do so since mid-July.