Sweden and Finland take a new step towards NATO membership

Photo: AP Photo / Virginia Mayo

On Tuesday, Sweden and Finland will sign accession protocols, the next step on their road to NATO membership. 

The protocol will be signed today by the 30 member countries of the alliance in a ceremony in Brussels.

The foreign ministers of the two new member states are taking part in the historic event, along with representatives of the current members of NATO.

However, member states must also follow the protocol in their political systems, normally their national assemblies. It is a time-consuming process. According to the German news agency DPA, Sweden and Finland are expected to be full members of NATO in six to eight months.

The accession protocols could have been signed earlier but were delayed by Turkey’s opposition to the two countries’ NATO membership.

The historic decision to invite Sweden and Finland into NATO was taken at the alliance’s summit in Madrid last week – after Turkey agreed to lift its veto in exchange for a series of political concessions from the two states.

Source: © NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today / #NorwayTodayNews

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2 Comments on "Sweden and Finland take a new step towards NATO membership"

  1. Apparently, Erdogan is accepting that Sweden will *not* extradite resident Kurds to Khashoggi-like deaths in Turkey. (Assange should be so lucky.)

    Meanwhile, the Russians are talking about reconsidering the Svalbard treaty agreed in 2013 (before the Kyiv coup) between Jens Stoltenberg and moderate Dmitry Medvedev, if Norway is going to block even food and medical shipments to the islands via Norway as had been previously set up and was ongoing. I had thought Peace Prize Norway’s weapons shipments to Ukraine was quite confrontational enough.

    And the skyrocketing price of gasoline/bensin was duly noted in the 4th of July States, along with Joe Biden telling Americans they would have to accept it for the war … we didn’t (and don’t) want. (Note the 1 July 2022 New York Post article, ” Biden adviser: ‘Liberal world order’ demands enduring high gas prices.”)
    “Hours earlier, Biden was asked by New York Times reporter Jim Tankersley during a news conference in Madrid: “The war has pushed prices up. [Oil] could go as high as $200 a barrel, some analysts think. How long is it fair to expect American drivers and drivers around the world to pay that premium for this war?”
    “As long as it takes,” Biden answered.”

    Significant, that a reporter from pro-war NY Times would ask the question. The Biden admin is running out of time already – and so far before our 8Nov22 midterm election.

    Unless the Ukrainians finally agree to the Russians’ treaty demands to avoid continued/greater territorial losses, this war is only going to get much worse … in many ways … for everyone … in the world … if it doesn’t explode entirely – terminally.

  2. The Russians are of course still eligible to directly ship non-military goods to their settlements in the Svalbards themselves, but this new inconvenience of barring even food and medical supplies via Norway seems unnecessarily confrontative.
    Meanwhile, the Lithuanians seem to be re-considering their own EU-ordered land blockade of Russian transportation to Kaliningrad. Again, the Russians could outflank that blockade by sea, but at significantly greater effort.

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