The Nordic, Baltic countries and Poland said on Tuesday that they expect Sweden’s membership of NATO to increase security in the Baltic Sea region.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said his country is joining NATO as a motivated partner.
“It is well known that Sweden, after 200 years of non-alignment, seeks common protection, but I also want all NATO allies to know that we also provide security and we’re here for the long-term,” he told reporters.
Sauli Niinisto, president of Finland, the alliance’s newest member, said he has “said many times that their membership is not complete without Sweden”.
Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year. Finland officially joined the alliance in April.
However, Sweden’s accession was blocked by Turkey, which accused Stockholm of not doing enough to crack down on Kurdish militants and other groups that Ankara considers a threat to its national security.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced on the eve of the summit that Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had agreed to send Sweden’s NATO accession protocol to the Turkish parliament for ratification.
Hungary said after the announcement that its ratification of Sweden’s NATO bid is now “only a technical question”.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store told reporters in Vilnius that “few countries in NATO will be more touched” by Sweden’s NATO membership than his country.
“For the first time in modern history, the entire Nordic region will be inside NATO and that has profound positive implications for the way we plan our security, our defence and how we will contribute positively to NATO,” he said.
Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said that Sweden’s membership “means a lot for the security of our region, but [it is] also making NATO much stronger”.
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