When NATO’s defense ministers meet in Brussels next week, Sweden and Finland will also be present. Although the Swedish and Finnish membership applications are not complete, several steps are now being taken that deepen the military cooperation with NATO.
– I think there are closer to fifteen acts to be signed, what we are seeing is an ever deeper integration of Sweden into NATO on the military side, says Defense Minister Pål Jonson (M) to SVT.
Sweden and Finland are not members yet, but if you look at the agreements that are being written now, it almost seems as if they are?
– That’s how it is, and a lot has happened since we got so-called invitee status in July. After all, we have had a gradual political and military integration into NATO.
Get involved in future plans
At the meeting, NATO will also make decisions on so-called “Interim Capability Targets” for Sweden and Finland. Put simply, you can say that NATO decides what each country can be expected to contribute to the common defense, and this is the first time that Sweden has been involved in the planning in this way.
– The basis is that we identify a number of targets for different military resources that we can contribute to NATO’s common defense, it can be naval forces, ground forces or air forces. This will then be included in NATO’s joint defense planning, says Pål Jonson.
This week, the government also decided that Sweden should be included in Mawi, a NATO collaboration for joint storage of ammunition. This means that Sweden may store ammunition in other countries. One of the ideas with the storage is that NATO should have a faster reaction time.
Sweden increasingly integrated
Next week, Sweden will also enter into an agreement with the European sky shield initiative, a joint cooperation on air defense led by Germany. 14 countries are already included, including Finland. In the future, Sweden is also expected to be part of a collaboration on future air surveillance when the so-called Awacs aircraft for radar reconnaissance are to be replaced.