Hungarian Parliament has ratified Sweden’s NATO membership bid by an overwhelming vote.
With this, Sweden has cleared its final hurdle to joining the western military alliance.
The parliament’s approval of the instrument of ratification of Sweden’s Accession Protocol needs to be signed by newly elected president Tamas Sulyok.
Following this, NATO will send a formal invitation to the Nordic nation to join the 31-member group.
For long, it has been doubtful if Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, an authoritarian leader and longtime Russian ally, would move in favor of Sweden’s aspiration to join the defense alliance.
But last week, Orban said Hungary and Sweden were “prepared to die for each other.”
Hungary was the only remaining NATO member to ratify the instrument of ratification of Sweden’s Accession Protocol.
The North Atlantic Council’s approval of the applications for NATO membership requires ratification by the parliaments of all the countries of the bloc.
NATO leaders took a historic decision to invite Finland and Sweden to become members of the Alliance at their summit in Madrid in June 2022.
In April 2023, Finland became the 31st member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization through the fastest ratification process in its modern history.
A potential expansion of the trans-Atlantic defense bloc with the addition of Sweden and Finland is seen as a big political challenge by Russian President Vladimir Putin as his war to conquer Ukraine grinds ahead.
The United States welcomed the Hungarian parliament’s vote to approve Sweden’s application to join NATO.
‘Like Finland, which recently joined our Alliance, Sweden is a strong democracy with a highly capable military that shares our values and vision for the world,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in a statement. “Having Sweden as a NATO Ally will make the United States and our Allies even safer,” he added.
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