Defense Policy | The NATO report will be presented to the plenary session of the parliament on Tuesday

Policy|Defense policy

Parliamentary the plenary session begins on Tuesday to deal with the foreign affairs committee’s report on Finland’s accession to the military alliance NATO.

The issue is in the first reading of the plenary session in the afternoon.

Finland’s national NATO legislation is to be processed in the parliament until the end of this election period. The Foreign Affairs Committee completed its report on Friday, in which it advocates accepting membership. The report was unanimous.

Speaker Matti Vanhanen (Centre) said on Friday that a tentative time had also been set for the second reading of the plenary session, but it had not yet been decided bindingly.

Even if the parliament were to finalize the membership, Finland will not become a full member of NATO until all current NATO countries have accepted the new member. Finland and Sweden, which applied for membership last spring, are still waiting for ratifications from Turkey and Hungary.

The government presented the draft law on joining NATO to the parliament in early December. At that time, Vanhanen proposed that the parliament would only consider the motion to the end when Finland has been accepted into NATO by all current member states. He justified the matter by saying that the parliament does not make laws in the table drawer.

The other week, however, the parties agreed that Finland will already accept the issue in the current parliament. The acceleration of the schedule has been justified, among other things, by the break brought by the spring parliamentary elections.