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August 8, 2022 • 1:44 pm ET
When will Sweden and Finland join NATO? Tracking the ratification process across the Alliance.
The process for Finland and Sweden joining NATO is speeding up, but there are plenty more twists and turns ahead before we reach the finish line. With this tracker, the Atlantic Council team is keeping tabs on the countries that have ratified the amended NATO treaty to welcome two new members—and handicapping the political prospects for ratification in the countries that have yet to approve the Finnish and Swedish bids.
Following an overwhelming August 3 vote in the US Senate, twenty-three NATO countries have approved the enlargement (often by large margins), with seven left to go. Here’s what to expect from them in the coming months.
Current count: Number of NATO members that have ratified Finland and Sweden’s accession
Timeline: NATO members that have approved Finland and Sweden’s accession, by date of ratification
Click the left and right arrows to move through the timeline
Map: Who has ratified Finnish and Swedish accession–and who hasn’t yet
Source: NATO Parliamentary Assembly
Cheat sheet: Expert intel on the next ratification debates to watch
TURKEY: Expect more jockeying into 2023
Three considerations unique to Turkey will influence the pace of ratification for Swedish and Finnish accession to NATO.
The first consideration will be action by the applicants to fulfill commitments they made on Turkish security and counterterrorism concerns in a June 28 trilateral memorandum. The speed of ratification will be tied to tangible action on defense industrial cooperation (ending arms embargoes), prosecution of financing and recruitment activities linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and other terror organizations, and establishment of a Permanent Joint Mechanism to oversee security cooperation more broadly.
A second consideration is the 2023 presidential and legislative elections; President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will avoid appearing too soft or hasty on accession.
A third consideration is a potential Turkish military operation against the PKK in Syria. Having the accession process ongoing but not yet complete will mute some Western criticism of a new operation, but there will be a point at which perceived delay could conversely lead to increasing Western frustration and pressure.
These considerations together support the idea that Ankara will be one of, if not the, last NATO member to approve the twin accessions. It may be instructive to review North Macedonia’s accession for comparison. After North Macedonia struck a deal with Greece over a dispute about the country’s name in June 2018, it took another twenty-one months for ratification by the individual NATO member governments (ironically Greece only took eight months, with Spain taking twenty-one due to a political crisis). By that yardstick, we can expect something like a yearlong process (somewhere between eight and twenty months) after Ankara is satisfied that Sweden and Finland have taken substantive steps to fulfill the June 28 memorandum. This could end up being shortly after Turkish national elections in June 2023.
—Rich Outzen is a nonresident senior fellow at Atlantic Council IN TURKEY and a former US State Department official
HUNGARY: Orbán will take the plunge—but only at the end
The Hungarian position on support for Finnish and Swedish NATO membership is less than enthusiastic. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will probably be the last to ratify. Yes, it’s his decision and his alone. However, in the end he will ratify.
When asked about the ratification, he argues that he has to “take Turkey’s sensitivities” into account. He is of the view that NATO’s open-door policy is a provocation to Russia and the West’s broken promise—which is bizarre given the fact that he was the one signing the Washington Treaty to bring Hungary into NATO in 1999. The timeline for ratification remains unclear.
—András Simonyi is a nonresident senior fellow at the Global Energy Center and a former Hungarian ambassador to the United States
CZECHIA: Watch for the end of September
The fact that Czechia did not yet ratify Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO is due to procedural reasons only. While only two-thirds of the US Senate is required for ratification, in the case of Czechia it has to pass through the government, both chambers of Parliament (where relevant committees are also supposed to discuss it), and the president. And the process has been slowed down by the parliamentary summer recess. We saw a recent surge of ratifications where NATO country legislatures managed to do it before the summer break. Now expect a pause.
In Prague, the government approved Sweden and Finland’s membership on the last day of the parliamentary session. Knowing that the Czechs won’t be the last to ratify and that the accession process won’t depend on them, the Parliament decided not to hold an extraordinary session, which might have complicated the process. The Czech Senate can discuss the ratification as early as August 10, while the Chamber of Deputies can do so either on August 23 or after September 5. It’s likely that Czechia will ratify Finland and Sweden’s membership by the end of September.
—Petr Tůma is a visiting fellow at the Europe Center and a Czech career diplomat
SLOVAKIA: Another September target
Procedural reasons also explain why several other countries, including Slovakia, have not yet ratified Finland and Sweden’s NATO accession. The government in Bratislava approved the amended treaty at the end of July, and the parliament (there’s only one chamber) is expected to discuss it in early September at its first regular meeting after the summer break. Some opposition figures may try to score a few political points by criticizing NATO, but it is generally assumed that the proposal will pass. President Zuzana Čaputová will certainly endorse it very soon after.
—Petr Tůma is a visiting fellow at the Europe Center and a Czech career diplomat
GREECE: Expect easy passage by the end of the year
Athens supports Sweden and Finland joining NATO for both the geopolitical value and democratic credentials that the two countries bring. Greece’s Parliament is widely expected to ratify the amended NATO treaty without asterisks when it resumes work after the summer recess. It is not yet clear when the vote will occur, but it is expected to take place before the end of the year.
The Greek government has been unequivocally in favor of the expansion of NATO to include the two European democracies and members of the European Union, with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis even warning during a visit to Washington in May that “this is not the right time to use NATO membership to bargain for other issues.” Similarly, the mainstream parties in Greece, including those of the opposition, are expected to vote in favor of the two countries’ accession.
—Katerina Sokou is a nonresident senior fellow at the Europe Center and the Washington, DC correspondent for SKAI TV and Greek daily newspaper Kathimerini
Expert assessments of Spain and Portugal, the two other NATO members that have yet to ratify, coming soon.
Image: Sweden’s Foreign Minister Ann Linde and Finland’s Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto attend a signing ceremony with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, signing their countries’ accession protocols at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, Belgium July 5, 2022.
