Greece ratifies Finland, Sweden´s NATO accession protocols

The Greek parliament on Thursday ratified the accession protocols of Finland and Sweden to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), according to Finnish Ambassador to Greece Jari Gustafsson.

Gustafsson in his twitter post wrote that lawmakers from both ruling and opposition parties strongly supported the NATO membership of Finland and Sweden and the ratification needs approval from the President.

“The work is progressing. The Greek parliament has just ratified the NATO membership of Finland and Sweden,” Defence Minister Antti Kaikkonen also wrote in his twitter in Finnish.

With Greece, so far, 25 countries out of total 30 ratified the NATO accession protocols for Finland and Sweden.

The other countries are USA, Italy, Canada, Estonia, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, United Kingdom, Albania, Poland, Latvia, Slovenia, Croatia, The Netherlands, Luxemburg, Bulgaria, Germany, Romania, Lithuania, Montenegro, Belgium, North Macedonia, France and Czech Republic.

Finland´s accession protocol needs to be ratified by the rest five NATO member countries, although some questions from Turkey still remain in this regard.

Turkey, which already agreed to support Finland´s membership, is now raising question regarding the extradition of members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its leaders are very often threatening to block the membership.

On July 5, the ambassadors of the 30 NATO states signed the accession protocols at the organization's headquarters in Brussels, with the foreign ministers of the two Nordic countries in attendance.