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LONDON —Pressure to approve Sweden's accession to NATO is mounting on Hungary, the last member state yet to ratify Stockholm's application. The Hungarian and Swedish prime ministers are due to meet on the sidelines of a European Union summit in Brussels on Thursday to discuss the issue.
Sweden and Finland applied simultaneously to join NATO in May 2022, three months after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Finland officially joined in April of last year, becoming the 31st member of the Western military alliance.
Sweden, however, is still waiting. Turkish lawmakers finally gave their approval for Sweden's bid on January 23, after Ankara resolved a long-running dispute with Stockholm over purported Swedish support for Kurdish separatists.
That left Hungary as the only NATO member state yet to ratify Sweden's accession, despite a pledge by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban that his country would not be the last member to approve the bid.
Speaking to reporters in Washington on Monday following talks with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Budapest to act quickly.
"Sweden brings tremendous capabilities to the alliance in every domain. Hungary now will have to act in order to complete the process, Sweden's accession. But I fully anticipate that will happen in the weeks ahead when Hungary's parliament returns," Blinken said.
Hungarian lawmakers from Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz party have repeatedly stalled voting on Sweden's NATO bid since the application was submitted in 2022.
Last week, however, in an apparent policy reversal, Prime Minister Orban said he supported Sweden's NATO accession and that he would advise MPs to vote for its accession when they reconvene in mid-February following a winter recess.
Opposition lawmakers on Monday demanded an extraordinary session of parliament in order to hold the vote, although the motion was not expected to succeed.
Laszlo Kover, the Hungarian parliament speaker and a founding member of the Fidesz party, said on January 25 that he saw no urgency in holding a vote. "Moreover, I do not think there is an extraordinary situation," Kover told the Hungarian news website Index.
Senior Fidesz MPs have voiced anger at Sweden for criticizing a backsliding of democracy in Hungary. Balazs Orban, who is Prime Minister Viktor Orban's political director but of no relation, told Hungarian television last week that "the way that the Swedish political elite has been attacking Hungary for the last 10 years ... creates a basis for Hungary to ask for further political consultations from the Swedes, since this is about us getting committed to a joint military alliance."
Hungary is trying to flex its diplomatic muscle on the global stage, said analyst Zoltan Pogatsa, a political economist at the University of West Hungary.
"I think Viktor Orban wants to remind Western countries every now and then: 'Don't criticize us because we do have cards, we are not sitting at the table without cards, we do have our cards. So be careful when you try to criticize us for corruption, for rule of law issues, or the quality of our democracy,'" Pogatsa told Reuters.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson last week rebuffed an invitation from his Hungarian counterpart to begin negotiations in Budapest on Sweden's NATO application. "No demands that are related to NATO membership - that's not on the table," Kristersson told Sweden's TV4. But, he added, the two countries have much to discuss, including cooperation inside NATO, Hungary's upcoming EU presidency, and support for Ukraine.
The two leaders are due to meet at a European Union summit in Brussels Thursday. In a letter to Orban, Kristersson said, "I agree with you that a more intensive dialogue between our countries would be beneficial."
Meanwhile, Russia said earlier in January that it would take "retaliatory measures" if Sweden joins the alliance.
"Sweden's membership in NATO will have an extremely negative impact on the level of stability in northern Europe and the Baltic region," Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters in Moscow on January 26. "We will take retaliatory measures of a political and military-technical nature in order to stop threats to the defense capability of our country."