"Political relations between Hungary and Sweden must improve before we approve the Nordic state's application for NATO membership," Orbán was quoted as saying at the Qatar Economic Forum by Reuters.
“Political relations between Hungary and Sweden are dreadful. We do not want to import conflicts into NATO.”
- the Hungarian Prime Minister added. Hungary hasn't approved Sweden's application to join NATO for almost a year, and it took Parliament eight months to approve the Finnish application. NATO's next summit is set to be held in July, and if Hungary and Turkey fail to ratify the country's accession request before then, Sweden would only be able to attend as a guest.
It was after a long delay, at the end of February that the governing parties came up with an unexpected reason for why the requests haven't been ratified yet. Fidesz leader Máté Kocsis said that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán wanted the proposal to be accepted, but the governing faction was divided on the issue, which led to a serious debate. A delegation of negotiators was then sent to the two countries to settle the contentious issues. At the end of the diplomatic program, the delegatioin's leader, Csaba Hende said that they were satisfied and supported the countries' accession, but in the end only the Finnish request was approved.
On the government's side, the Prime Minister's Political Director, Balázs Orbán had recently said that Hungarian MPs "expected reassurance" from the Swedes, who had "insulted Hungarian voters, their representatives and thus Hungary as a whole". It now appears from the Prime Minister's statement that the Swedes have so far failed to placate the Fidesz-KDNP MPs.
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