NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Saturday that he was actively working to ensure that Sweden and Finland join the bloc by the NATO summit in Lithuania, scheduled for July 11-12.
“I continue to work hard to ensure that they are members by the Vilnius summit,” Stoltenberg said at the 2023 Munich Security Conference.
Stoltenberg pointed out that the ball is technically not in NATO’s court, as the bloc had already made a “historic decision” to invite Sweden and Finland to join last year and all NATO allies signed accession protocols for the two Nordic countries.
“What now remains is the ratification process of those protocols in all the 30 allied countries. So far, 28 of the 30 have already ratified, and then Turkiye and Hungary remain… I urge all allies to finalize the ratification,” NATO boss said.
Sweden and Finland abandoned neutrality and applied for NATO membership in May 2022 after Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine.
The accession process came to a standstill in January 2023 after Rasmus Paludan, the leader of the far-right Danish political party Stram Kurs, burned a copy of the Quran in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm with permission from the Swedish authorities. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan then condemned the demonstration and said Sweden should not count on Ankara’s support for its NATO bid.
