Turkey’s president has promised to take the Swedish NATO application to parliament as quickly as possible. But no exact timetable has been presented.
– It has not gone through parliament yet, so we are not completely in, you have to respect that, says Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson to Nyhetsmorgon.
Turkey’s and Hungary’s parliaments are expected to close soon for the summer break, and the question is whether they will have time to ratify Sweden’s application before then. But Monday’s negotiations meant a clear statement of intent from Turkey to agree after more than a year of complicated negotiations.
– There was a spirit in the room that now we will solve this, says Kristersson about the last historic negotiation on Monday evening.
Even Hungary must approve before Sweden becomes NATO’s 32nd member country, and Hungary has said that it will not be the last to approve.
“Notched at the beginning”
It was the whole that caused the knots to be dissolved with Turkey, says Kristersson.
– It was like most negotiations, it’s a bit complicated at the beginning but then you find common denominators and I thought we managed to shine a light on important things that Sweden has done, but also that other countries have been very keen to help in this process . We have had very ongoing contacts with the USA of course, but also many other NATO countries.
Among other things, Sweden promised to cooperate even more closely with Turkey in the fight against terrorism, to intensify economic cooperation and to support efforts to revive Turkey’s membership negotiations with the EU.