Slovakia ratifies Finland, Sweden´s NATO accession protocols

Slovakia´s parliament on Tuesday ratified the accession protocols for Finland and Sweden to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), according to Defence Minister Antti Kaikkonen.

“I just received a pleasant message from the Slovak defense minister that the Slovak parliament has ratified our NATO membership by a clear majority of votes,” Kaikkonen wrote in his twitter post in Finnish late Tuesday night.

A total of 126 lawmakers in the 150-seat parliament of Slovakia voted for Finland membership while the proposal for Swedish membership was supported by 124 lawmakers, international media reported.

With this, so far 28 countries out of total 30 ratified the NATO accession protocols for Finland and Sweden.

Earlier, 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, Czech Republic, Greece, Spain and Portugal ratified the membership protocols.

Finland´s accession protocol needs to be ratified by the rest two NATO member countries Hungary and Turkey, 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.