Orban announced the date of Hungary’s ratification of Sweden’s application to NATO

Stockholm’s last hurdle will soon fall

Hungary may ratify Sweden’s application to join NATO as early as February 26, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said.

Budapest could ratify Sweden’s application to join NATO as soon as February 26, when the country’s parliament resumes work, Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced on Saturday.

“Together with the Swedish prime minister, we have taken important steps to restore trust,” Orban said during his annual address to the nation. “We are moving towards ratifying Sweden’s accession to NATO at the beginning of the spring session of parliament.”

According to the Hungarian government website, parliament resumes its spring session on February 26.

As CNN recalls, Hungary is the last NATO member to approve Sweden’s entry into the Western military alliance.

Last June, Orban’s Fidesz party told CNN it expected Stockholm to “allay its concerns” ahead of Sweden’s vote on NATO membership. In July, Fidesz told CNN that “Swedish government officials regularly insulted Hungarian voters and Hungary as a whole.”

But in January, Viktor Orban said he told NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg that he had “confirmed that the Hungarian government supports Sweden’s NATO membership.”

Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO in May 2022, shortly after armed conflict broke out in Ukraine earlier that year. Finland joined NATO in April 2023, doubling the alliance’s border with Russia, but Stockholm’s bid has faced difficulties.

As CNN notes, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, considered the closest to Russian President Vladimir Putin among European Union leaders, initially signaled he had no objection to Sweden joining the bloc before moving to stall it. Katalin Csech, a Hungarian MEP, said last year that Orban’s blocking of Sweden’s bid was “just another favor for Vladimir Putin.”

But following Turkey’s leaders’ decision earlier this year to approve Sweden’s entry into the alliance, leaving Hungary as the only holdout among the bloc’s members, Orban has taken steps to allow the process to move forward.