Government asks President to submit Finland and Sweden's NATO membership documents to Seimas for ratification
During the meeting on Wednesday, the Government approved the appeal to President of the Republic of Lithuania to submit the Protocol to the NATO Treaty on the accession of Finland and Sweden to the Alliance to the Seimas for ratification.
Under the resolution by the Cabinet of Ministers, President is asked to submit the Protocol to the North Atlantic Treaty on the Accession of the Republic of Finland and the Kingdom of Sweden, signed in Brussels on 5 July 2022, to the Seimas for ratification.
‘We warmly welcome the decision by Finland and Sweden to join NATO and are pleased that the process has begun. By supporting this step, we have no doubts that it will strengthen not only NATO but also the security of the Baltic region as well as Finland and Sweden’, Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė said previously.
Since Finland and Sweden have expressed their willingness to join NATO and have successfully completed the first steps of the process, the parliaments of the member states of the alliance will have to ratify the protocol to the treaty.
The two countries were invited to join NATO at the NATO Summit in Madrid at the end of June, and on July 5 the accession protocols for Finland and Sweden were signed in Brussels by representatives of all 30 NATO member states.
Finland and Sweden became partners of NATO in 1994 when they joined the Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme. On May 18 this year, Finland and Sweden formally applied to join NATO in response to changes in the security situation following Russia's war against Ukraine. Prime Ministers of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia have expressed their full support and welcomed the historic decisions made by the two countries already in May.