“The coming weeks will be incredibly important,” says Foreign Minister Tobias Billström (M) to TT.
Billström’s calendar is filled with meetings and trips in the near future. The purpose is to press for Swedish NATO membership. Trips are booked to Germany, France, Canada, Romania, Poland and the Netherlands, among others.
“I plan both to receive foreign ministers from NATO allies, but also to travel around to a number of NATO countries to make sure that the issue of Sweden’s accession continues to be high on the agenda,” he says.
Maintain focus
The goal is for the NATO countries to continue to prioritize the Swedish NATO application, so that Turkey and Hungary feel pressure to ratify Sweden’s NATO membership before the NATO summit in Vilnius on July 11–12.
According to information to TT, there is concern that the NATO countries will have other, more urgent issues to think about before Vilnius. Above all Ukraine.
A sensitive discussion awaits in Vilnius about how far NATO should go to support Ukraine’s path into NATO and to deter Russia from future attacks before Ukraine can become a NATO member.
— There are different views on it in the defense alliance, said Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday.
Turkish meeting
Next week, US Foreign Minister Antony Blinken will come to Sweden. Billström and Blinken then continue to Oslo, where NATO’s foreign ministers have an informal meeting. Then there are opportunities for several bilateral meetings about Sweden’s NATO membership.
Billström also aims to meet Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu face-to-face in Oslo, provided he also goes there. It will be an opportunity to get information about how Turkey views Swedish NATO membership after the second round of the Turkish presidential election was held on Sunday.
Contacts between Sweden and Turkey have basically been down during the time that the election campaign has been going on in Turkey. The government hopes that Turkey will be more positive about ratifying Sweden’s NATO membership after the election is over.
Strong arguments
Billström emphasizes that there are strong arguments for ensuring that Sweden becomes a member of NATO before Vilnius. One reason is that NATO must make several important decisions about planning and targeting NATO’s collective defense.
— That in itself justifies becoming a member of this meeting, because it is only then that we get access to all the opportunities we have to influence, says Billström.
But there is an additional reason. It is important to take advantage of the window of time before the Turkish parliament closes for its summer break.
— If we do not become members for Vilnius, we then have to wait perhaps another number of weeks or months for the parliament to reopen and can process the Swedish application, says Billström.
“No substance”
A couple of weeks ago, Defense Minister Pål Jonson (M) said at a meeting with Riksdag journalists that if Swedish NATO membership were to be delayed until after the next NATO summit in Washington in April 2024, it would mean problems for Finnish-Swedish defense cooperation.
According to an article in DN, the Washington meeting may emerge as a new target date for Swedish NATO membership.
But it is something that is sharply denied by Billström.
“There is no substance in the claim that Sweden aims to become members only next year,” he says.