Swedish NATO accession on agenda for June-July session of Hungarian Parliament

After being postponed in the spring, Sweden's accession to NATO could be voted on by the Hungarian Parliament in June or July. The agenda item "Bill on the ratification of the protocol on the accession of the Kingdom of Sweden to the North Atlantic Treaty" was noticed by Atv.hu in the June-July monthly session schedule published on parliament's website.

However, which day the parliament will vote on Sweden's NATO accession is not yet known.

The proposal to ratify the latest expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance was submitted to the Hungarian Parliament last July. After considerable delay, Finland's accession was finally voted through by the Hungarian parliament this spring – the governing parties' faction announced its support two days after Turkey did – but Sweden's has been delayed ever since. According to government sources, the intention is for Parliament to vote on the Swedish accession before the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius on 11-12 July.

The parliamentary session was recently extended until 7 July. Parliament will start its extraordinary session on 16 June, but is reportedly not due to sit for two weeks, so it is likely that the issue of Swedish NATO membership will not be put to Parliament until early July.

The recent US blocking of a $735 million arms sale for Hungary on the grounds that Hungary has not yet approved Sweden's accession to NATO could have served as a nudge towards the accession's approval. Although, the Hungarian Ministry of Defence claims that it did not intend to buy HIMARS missile systems. Their statement explained that the government had indeed requested information on the missile system last year, but since they had not received a reply from the US side, they considered the issue closed.