Kaikkonen discusses NATO membership with Austin, Hultqvist

Defence Minister Antti Kaikkonen on Thursday held a trilateral meeting with his US and Swedish counterparts Lloyd J. Austin and Peter Hultqvist in Brussels and discussed the ongoing process of Finland´s and Sweden´s NATO membership, according to the Ministry of Defence.

“Antti Kaikkonen had a trilateral meeting today (Thursday) with US Secretary of Defense Loyd Austin and Swedish Minister of Defence Peter Hultqvist. Good discussion on the current security situation, Finland and Sweden NATO membership process,” the ministry wrote in a twitter post.

The US Defence Secretary said they agreed that Russia’s latest actions underscored the need to bring Finland and Sweden into the military Alliance.

“Held another productive meeting with Defence Ministers from Finland and Sweden. We look forward to the work of integrating these two strong countries into NATO and we agreed that Russia’s latest actions underscore the need to bring them into the Alliance,” Austin wrote in his twitter after the meeting.

Kaikkonen took part in NATO’s meeting of defence ministers at NATO Headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday and Thursday.

The meeting of defence ministers is the first ministerial level NATO meeting in which Finland and Sweden participated as observer members.

Earlier Kaikkonen held bilateral meetings with the defence ministers of Turkey and Hungary.

So far 28 countries out of total 30 ratified the NATO accession protocols for Finland and Sweden.

The 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, Czech Republic, Greece, Spain and Portugal.

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.