Voting on Sweden's NATO membership postponed in Hungarian Parliament

In Hungary, an extraordinary parliamentary session was held for opposition party members of parliament to approve Sweden's NATO membership. Ruling party members boycotted the meeting and did not attend. According to local media reports, the voting on Sweden's NATO membership approval was postponed as the ruling party members, who hold a two-thirds majority in the parliament, did not attend the meeting.

Hungary's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Peter Szijjarto, stated on July 11th that approving Sweden's NATO membership was already a "purely technical issue."

On June 28th, Hungary announced that the session to approve Sweden's NATO membership was postponed until the autumn.

Trilateral meeting in Vilnius

After the trilateral meeting of Türkiye, Sweden, and NATO in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, an announcement was made stating that Türkiye would submit Sweden's NATO Accession Protocol to the Turkish Grand National Assembly, and Sweden would support Türkiye's efforts to revitalize its European Union (EU) membership process.

Finland became NATO's 31st member on April 4th, but Türkiye and Hungary had not yet approved Sweden's NATO membership. Hungarian Minister Szijjarto, in a statement on July 5th, emphasized that they would be in constant contact with Ankara and underlined that Hungary would not hinder any country's NATO membership if Türkiye's stance on Sweden's accession to the Alliance was to change.

"The final decision belongs to the parliament."

On June 14th, Szijjarto stated that the Hungarian government supported Sweden's NATO membership, but the final decision belonged to the parliament, taking into account the "insults" made by the Stockholm government to his country. Szijjarto also emphasized that they had been constantly exposed to criticisms, accusations, and allegations from Swedish politicians, recalling Sweden's accusations against Hungary of "not having democracy and becoming a dictatorship."

He then stated that such criticisms were valid reasons for not approving Sweden's NATO membership.