(Helsinki) – French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna on Thursday urged Turkey and Hungary to ratify Sweden’s NATO membership.
“We would like to see Sweden in NATO and we would like to see Turkey and Hungary implement their commitment,” she said during a press conference with her Finnish counterpart Elina Valtonen in Helsinki.
Hungary and Turkey lifted their veto against Sweden’s accession to NATO last July, but they were slow to ratify its membership.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán recently estimated that there was no “urgent need” to ratify this accession, calling first for “respect” for the northern country.
For his part, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan indicated last July that this ratification by the Turkish Parliament would not take place before October.
For months, Erdogan has been putting pressure on Sweden to take measures against the desecration of the Holy Qur’an, which has led to tension in relations between the two countries.
For its part, Finland became on April 31H A NATO member state, after three decades of military non-alignment and in the midst of the war in Ukraine.
