Minister of Foreign Affairs Péter Szijjártó stated in a press conference on Tuesday, 4 July that he is in constant talks with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan, about the ratification of Sweden’s proposed NATO accession.

He went on to claim that

Hungary will keep its promise to not hold up the Nordic country’s joining the military alliance,

thus, if Turkey is willing to change its stance on the issue, Hungary will follow suit.

This is all happening only a week before the NATO summit is set to place on 11–12 July in Vilnius, Lithuania.

In the meantime, the recently re-elected President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey also spoke about Sweden after a cabinet meeting on Monday. What he had to say then does not give the impression that Turkey is ready to back the NAO expansion just yet, as he talked about Sweden still having to ‘do their homework’. He also referred to a recent Quran burning incident that took place in front of Stockholm’s largest mosque last week,

calling it ‘a hate crime against Muslims.’

The Swedish government has officially condemned the act and called it ‘Islamophobic’.

On Thursday, Swedish, Turkish, and Finnish officials are scheduled to meet in Brussels, Belgium, trying to make some headway on the issue of Swedish NATO accession before the summit. Finland is the latest, 31st country to join the alliance, having been accepted in April of this year.

Conflicts Between Sweden and Hungary

The Swedish government made its official bid to become a NATO member state on 16 May 2022, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of that year. Since then, all but two of the 31 member states have ratified their accession.

The two holdouts are Hungary and Turkey.

The main issue causing conflict between the Hungarian and Swedish governments is the withheld EU funds. Many serving in the Hungarian executive and legislative branches believe that Sweden is partly responsible for spreading unfounded concerns about the state of democracy in Hungary, which resulted in the withholding of about €36 billion in COVID recovery and cohesion funds from the Union, while a rule of law assessment procedure is conducted by the EU Commission.

Previously, both President Katalin Novák and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán have expressed their support for the ratification of the Swedish NATO bid. However, members of the Fidesz-KDMP-supermajority National Assembly still refused to vote in favour, for the very reasons stated above. Since then, PM Orbán has somewhat shifted his tone to a less amicable one, saying in late May that ‘better relations’ are needed between Stockholm and Budapest before the ratification can take place.

However, in this latest turn of events, it again appears that the Hungarian government is once again backing Sweden in their effort to become a NATO member. A vote on the ratification of the accession, on the other hand, is unlikely to take place for a while, as the Hungarian parliament will be in recess between 7 July and 12 September. However, both President Novák and PM Orbán have the power to convene the Assembly for a snap vote in 48 hours if needed.