Finland will go to NATO together with Sweden, despite readiness of Ankara to send it invitation earlier
For now, Finland remains unchanged in its decision to move towards NATO membership together with Sweden, despite difficulties in negotiations between Stockholm and Ankara and hints from Turkey that Finland’s application is ready to be ratified sooner.
This was stated by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Finland Pekka Haavisto at a special briefing, Censor.NET reports with reference to Euro Integration.
"Erdogan's statements show that Turkey is ready to speed up the process of our accession to NATO, if necessary. We in Finland have longed, and still long, to join NATO together with Sweden. Over the past 10 months, a lot has been done to achieve this goal. Sweden is our closest ally in both defense and foreign policy, and our position remains unchanged," he said.
He noted that both NATO and individual member states also emphasized that it would be best if Finland and Sweden became members of the Alliance at the same time.
Pekka Haavisto repeated that after these signals from Erdoğan, there were consultations with the President of Finland, and then with the Turkish side, Stockholm and NATO.
"I still consider the NATO summit in Vilnius in July as an important stage, and I hope that both our countries will be accepted into the Alliance then at the latest," added the Finnish foreign minister.
It will be recalled that on January 28-29 Ankara received signals that Turkey is ready to consider Finland's accession to NATO separately from Sweden.
