The European Commission said that Turkey’s ratification of Sweden’s accession to NATO and Turkey’s progress towards joining the European Union are unrelated.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that Sweden’s accession to NATO will become possible after Turkey is admitted to the European Union.
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“The EU has a very clear accession process, there is a certain set of steps that a candidate country must complete, these processes (Sweden’s membership in NATO and Turkey’s accession to the EU ) cannot be linked,” the official said at a briefing in Brussels EC Dana Spinant.
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In turn, the representative of the EC, Ana Pisonero, explained that the European Commission is monitoring the progress of the candidate countries, “the next annual review of such progress will, as we expect, be published in October.”
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Turkey has been in the status of an EU candidate since 1999, and Croatia was the last to join the EU – this happened in 2013, the process took ten years. Since 2016, negotiations on a visa-free regime between Turkey and the EU have actually been suspended.
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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will hold a meeting in Vilnius on Monday between Erdogan and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson to try to remove obstacles to Sweden’s path to NATO. The meeting will take place on the eve of the NATO summit on July 11-12, at which the parties wanted to announce the entry of a new member, but a final power of attorney has not yet been reached.
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Finland and Sweden, against the background of the events in Ukraine in May 2022, applied to join the alliance. Finland became the 31st member of NATO on 4 April. Sweden’s application has not yet received Hungarian and Turkish approval.
