NATO enlargement | Turkey ‘wants things we can’t give’, Swedish PM

Sweden hopes that Ankara will lift its blockade, although it acknowledges that it cannot and does not want to comply with all of Turkey’s demands for NATO membership. The Swedish Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson, said this at the annual Society and Defense meeting, in which the NATO Secretary General participated. Asked if 2023 will be the year in which Sweden and Finland will join the Atlantic Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, has said:

“I hope so, I will not guarantee the exact date because, of course, at the end of the day, it must be a sovereign decision of the Turkish Parliament and, of the Hungarian, too, because there are two parliaments that have not yet ratified it. But I hope and I will continue working for ratification also in those two parliaments”.

Kristersson has described Sweden’s future entry into the Atlantic Alliance as a committed, long-term membership.

Sweden and Finland broke with decades of military non-alignment and applied to join NATO after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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