NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that Turkey will resume talks with Sweden and Finland regarding their accession to the alliance in the middle of next month in Brussels, while the Hungarian parliament will vote on joining next month.
Stoltenberg told Reuters that he had agreed with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the three countries would meet at NATO headquarters in mid-March "to address the challenges we face when it comes to Turkey's ratification of Sweden's accession protocol."
Stoltenberg, who met Erdogan last week in Ankara, seemed more optimistic on the subject than he had been in recent months.
"I see progress. My goal is for both Finland and Sweden to be full members by the time of the NATO summit to be held in Lithuania from 11 to 12 July," he said.
Sweden and Finland applied last year to join the transatlantic alliance after Russia's war on Ukraine, but Sweden faced objections from Turkey.
Ankara accuses Stockholm of harboring those it considers members of terrorist groups, and demands their extradition as a step towards giving Sweden's membership in NATO the green light to it.
Talks between Finland, Sweden and Turkey have stalled since January after Rasmus Paludan, leader of the Danish Hard Line party, burned a copy of the Koran outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm.
Turkey and Hungary are the only two NATO allies that have yet to ratify membership of Finland and Sweden, although Budapest said it aims to take that step for both countries in early March.
For his part, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Christerson said - yesterday, Wednesday - that talks with Turkey on NATO membership will resume in the middle of next month, and Christerson added during an interview with the Swedish public radio station, "There is also a date, it is not a secret, but we are waiting for confirmation."
On the other hand, the Hungarian parliament announced yesterday that it will vote in early March on the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO.
With the exception of Hungary and Turkey, the parliaments of all NATO member states have ratified the accession of the two Scandinavian countries to the Western alliance.
In order for Finland and Sweden to become members of the alliance, the parliaments of the 30 member states of the alliance must unanimously approve their candidacy.
The Hungarian Parliament said on its website that its members will discuss next week the issue of joining the two Scandinavian countries to the alliance, provided that they resolve this issue in two separate votes that will take place between 6 and 9 March.
The date of the Hungarian parliament's vote on these two nominations has been postponed several times in the past, claiming a busy agenda, while the opposition accuses Viktor Orban's government of procrastination.
The nationalist prime minister is a close ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and does his best to maintain strong ties with Russia despite its war against Ukraine.
Orban refrains from criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin and refuses to send weapons to Kiev, calling instead for an immediate ceasefire and peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.