Ukraine Gate – Kyiv – June 29, 2022- NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at a press conference in Madrid before the start of the summit with the participation of heads of state and government of the member states of the alliance that NATO leaders will formally invite Finland and Sweden to join the alliance today.
Stoltenberg emphasized that today NATO leaders will make the historic decision to invite Finland and Sweden into the alliance.
He pointed out that this will be possible thanks to the agreement that Finland and Sweden reached with Turkey yesterday, June 28, according to which this agreement is good for all countries, and in particular, Finland, Sweden and Turkey will cooperate more closely in information exchange, extradition and the joint fight against terrorism.
“We will make a decision today at the summit to invite Finland and Sweden to become its members,” Stoltenberg said.
He also said it was an unprecedentedly fast process and I think it would be hard to find any other accession in the few weeks between the application, which took place in mid-May, and the invitation being made today.
He added that after the official invitation, the next stage is the ratification of the protocol for the accession of the two Scandinavian countries to the parliaments of 30 NATO member states.
“This always takes a certain amount of time, but I would expect it to happen fairly quickly, as the Allies are ready to go through this certification process as soon as possible,” Stoltenberg added.
Turkey, Sweden and Finland also signed a tripartite memorandum on the requests of Stockholm and Helsinki to join NATO, and Turkey had previously opposed the entry of these countries to the alliance, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had spoken against the joining of the two Scandinavian countries to what he called their support for “terrorist organizations”, in reference to the party The banned PKK and Syrian Kurds are from the People’s Protection Units known as the Kurdish People’s Protection Units.
