Finland’s application for NATO membership was “a natural step” to take after Russia invaded Ukraine, Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said on Saturday at a conference on safety in Manama.
Finland and Sweden presented a joint candidacy for the Atlantic Alliance in May, abandoning decades of military non-alignment. This request, which must obtain the unanimity of the Member States, has been ratified by all the members with the exception of Turkey and Hungary.
“The request to join NATO was for us […] a natural step to take,” Mr. Haavisto said.
The Finnish minister recalled that Helsinki had already announced in 2004 that the “NATO option” would be considered in the event of a “dramatic change” in terms of security.
“And what could be a more dramatic change than your neighbor attacking a country of 50 million people?” he added.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been blocking the entry of the two Scandinavian countries into NATO since May, accusing them of protecting Kurdish fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG), considered as “terrorists” by Ankara.
Hungary argued for a legislative bottleneck, promising to ratify their request soon.