Hungarian parliament approves Sweden’s NATO bid after it is postponed
Hungary’s parliament voted Monday to approve Sweden as a new member of NATO, allowing the Nordic country to overcome a final hurdle that had blocked its membership and halted the military alliance’s attempts to isolate Russia over the war in Ukraine.
The measure was adopted after a vote of 188 in favor and only 6 against in the 199-member parliament, which is dominated by lawmakers from Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s ruling Fidesz party.
On Friday, after his Swedish counterpart, Ulf Kristersson, visited Budapest, the Hungarian capital, Mr Orban declared the end of a months-long row with Sweden over its membership of NATO.
Hungary had waited nineteen months to ratify Sweden’s accession, a delay that had confused and irked the United States and other members of the alliance, raising questions about Hungary’s reliability as a member of the alliance.
The parliamentary vote on Monday followed a decision by Sweden to supply Hungary with four Swedish-made Gripen fighter jets, in addition to the 14 already in use by the Hungarian air force. Stockholm also promised that Saab, which produces the fighter jets, would open an AI research center in Hungary.
Hungary, which had repeatedly promised not to be the last remnant, became the final obstacle to Sweden’s accession to NATO after the Turkish parliament voted to approve membership on January 23.
Mr. Orban, who has maintained cordial relations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia despite the war in Ukraine, has a long record of using his country’s veto power over major decisions in Europe to extract money or other rewards. to force. That pattern was visible not only in his whining about Sweden’s NATO membership, but also in his opposition to a $54 billion European Union financial package for Ukraine.
Mr Orbán relented this month in approving EU aid to Ukraine, a withdrawal that raised hopes he would soon order his Fidesz party to hold a parliamentary vote on Sweden. Mr Orban had assured NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on January 24 that Hungary would ratify Sweden’s accession “at the first possible opportunity”.
But when opposition lawmakers convened a session of parliament on February 5 to vote on Sweden’s membership, the Fidesz party boycotted the session.
The vote on Monday ended a standoff that had soured Hungary’s relations with the United States and other members of NATO. With the exception of Turkey, all approved Sweden’s membership over a year ago, after the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Even now that Hungary has admitted Sweden to the alliance, the long, arduous process of getting to this point is likely to leave a bitter taste. And the late agreement to NATO expansion, to which Hungary is making only a modest contribution, will not quickly change Mr. Orbán’s reputation as a troublemaker more interested in good relations with Mr. Putin, with whom he met in October had an amicable meeting. a visit to China, then in support of the alliance.
Hungary, on which its air force is highly dependent Gripen jets from Sweden, has given several and often varying explanations for the long delay in voting on Swedish membership. It cites problems with planning, criticism in Sweden of the democratic backsliding of Orbán’s increasingly authoritarian government, teaching materials used in Swedish schools and comments made by Kristersson years before he came to power.
Mr Orbán’s tough stance on Sweden, as well as his initial blocking of the aid package for Ukraine, reflected his predilection for efforts to settle his small country – Hungary has just 10 million inhabitants and accounts for just 1 percent of the economic production in the European Union. – as a force to be reckoned with on the European political scene.
That approach has infuriated fellow European leaders, but by rocking the boat and defying prevailing opinion about both NATO and the European Union, Mr Orban’s position on the far right in Europe and in parts of the far left, both of which are often biased towards Mr Orban’s views. Putin. They see Mr Orban as a courageous scourge of conventional wisdom.
Mr. Orban has long positioned himself as the unruly leader of a pan-European movement defending national sovereignty and traditional values against what he disparages as the “woke globalists” in Brussels, at the headquarters of both NATO and the European Union , and in Washington under the Biden administration.
Sweden, like most members of the European Union, has long accused Hungary of undermining democracy and violating minority rights. But after a right-wing government came to power in Stockholm last year, it retreated from criticizing Hungary’s domestic policies.
Admission to NATO requires the unanimous support of the alliance’s members. Finland was admitted to the alliance last April, but the strategic defeat it dealt Putin was undermined by delays in Sweden’s approval.