NATO will welcome Finland on Tuesday (04.03.2023) as the thirty-first formal member of the Alliance, once its accession process has been completed, with a ceremony on the same day that the allied foreign ministers meet at the headquarters of the organization.
“Tomorrow we will welcome Finland as the thirty-first member of NATO, making Finland and our Alliance stronger,” Allied Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced at a press conference on Monday.
Finland’s accession process, the Norwegian official noted, has been “the fastest in modern NATO history.” The move to be completed on Tuesday “will make Finland safer and NATO stronger.”
On Tuesday, Finland’s representative is scheduled to formally hand over the accession papers to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, whose office is the guardian of the military alliance’s founding treaty. Last year, in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, NATO formally invited Finland and Sweden to join the military alliance, but the Swedish candidacy is vetoed by Turkey, although the position is disputed in intense talks.
This Monday, the enormous platform where the flags of the 30 member countries of the alliance are raised already exhibited the mast that Finland should receive at the ceremony on Tuesday. In his press conference, Stoltenberg assured that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine “with the clear objective of having less NATO. But he will receive exactly the opposite in return.”
