Sweden's parliament overwhelmingly votes to join NATO

Sweden's prime minister Ulf Kristersson speaks at a news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz not in image after meeting at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany on March 15, 2023. Sweden's lawmakers overwhelmingly voted in favor of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - NATO The country's membership was voted on Wednesday by 269 in favor and 37 against. Forty-three lawmakers were not present. Two of the eight parties represented in the country's Parliament Riksdag — the Left Party and the Green Party — voted against the motion.

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Hungary and T rkiye are the last two holdouts among the 30 members of NATO to ratify the accession of Sweden and Finland to the military alliance.

On Wednesday a proposal by the Left Party and the Green Party to outlaw nuclear weapons on Sweden's territory in peace and wartime was voted down in the Riksdag.

Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO last May, despite their decades-long policies of military non-alignment.

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The President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed on Friday to ask his country's parliament to vote on Finland's NATO membership bid, but was delayed by Sweden, saying Finland has taken concrete steps to address T rkiye's security concerns.