Hungary assures to ratify Finland´s NATO accession protocol

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Wednesday assured President Sauli Niinistö that his country will ratify Finland´s NATO accession protocol.

The assurance was made during a telephone conversation between Niinistö and Orban, according to a twitter post of Niinistö.

“I had a telephone conversation with @PM ViktorOrban. Good that Finland can count on Hungary in our NATO ratification. I look forward to further strengthening our Fenno-Ugric connection also as allies,” Niinistö wrote in his twitter in the afternoon after the conversation.

Terming the cooperation between Finland and Hungary excellent, Orban in his twitter also wrote that the cooperation will always be excellent.

“Hungarian-Finnish relations have an ancient history. Our cooperation has always been excellent and will always be excellent! Thank you for the conversation, President @niinisto,” the Hungarian Premier wrote after the conversation.

Hungary remains one of the two NATO members yet to ratify their accession since Finland and Sweden submitted the NATO membership applications in May.

Their accession procedure officially started in early July after 30 NATO members, including Turkey signed accession protocols.

Another country Turkey is demanding concrete Finnish and Swedish actions to address Turkish security concerns over extraditing hostile groups members before it unblocks their accession into NATO.

Ankara has been complaining that the two countries moved slowly in fulfilling their commitments over Turkish security concerns, which are the deportation and extradition of members and associates of the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) and the Gulen Movement, both deemed terrorist organizations by Turkey.

Delegations from Turkish and Finnish justice ministries held a technical meeting last week in Ankara on the extradition requests, a follow-up on the security pledges Finland made along with Sweden in June, when the three countries reached an agreement, with the other two promising to support Turkey's fight against terrorism and agreed to address its "pending deportation or extradition requests of terror suspects expeditiously and thoroughly."

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 Portugal and Slovakia ratified the membership protocols.