The foreign ministers of Finland, Sweden and Turkey will discuss Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO membership process tomorrow, says the Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu according to the news channel NTV.
The foreign ministers of the NATO countries are meeting in Bucharest, Romania on Tuesday and Wednesday. Finland is participating for the first time as an observer member. Finland is represented by the foreign minister Pekka Haavisto (green).
Of the NATO countries, only Hungary and Turkey have not ratified the membership of Finland and Sweden.
Last week, the Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán announced that the ratification will be discussed in the Hungarian Parliament only in February next year. As recently as the beginning of the week, it was believed that Hungary would vote on the matter in December, which has previously been held up in Finland.
The reason for the postponement has been speculated to be that the EU finance ministers will meet on December 6 to decide whether to release Hungary’s EU funds, which the EU has frozen due to Hungary’s weak democratic development. It is about the conditionality mechanism of the rule of law, which links EU funding and compliance with the rule of law.
Marin is surprised by the possible connection
Prime minister Sanna Marin (sd) intends to discuss the matter with Orbán.
“I am going to ask Orbán about this very directly the next time I see him. We have a Western Balkan summit in Albania on Independence Day, and if he is there, I will definitely ask about the situation and schedule in Hungary,” Marin said during the Prime Minister’s interview session on Yle on Sunday.
According to Marin, Finland has never acted in such a way that Finland connects unrelated issues together. According to him, you have to trust and believe that others will also respect this so that, for example, the use of EU funds, respect for the rule of law and NATO ratification would not be linked together in relation to Finland.
“I want to trust that the Hungarian Prime Minister will not make such a connection, because Finland has never acted like this either. We have been fair,” Marin said.