Finland announced this Sunday, May 15 its "historic" candidacy for NATO, before a decisive meeting in Sweden with a view to a probable request for simultaneous membership of the two countries, a direct consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. .
Membership of NATO imposes on the candidate country a real entrance exam during which it must convince each of the thirty members of the Alliance of its contribution to collective security and its ability to meet the obligations imposed. by the club.
The process is codified: once the decision has been taken by a third country to join, the members of NATO must unanimously agree to invite it to join them.
But concretely, how does the membership procedure take place?
What are the different stages?
Read alsoWhy Finland's NATO membership is a major geopolitical upheaval
What are the stages of integration into NATO?
First, the members' invitation launches the accession talks: two meetings take place at the organization's headquarters in Brussels, where the applicant must
convince
the representatives of the countries and the experts of the Alliance of his ability to accept “
the political, legal and military obligations and commitments resulting from the Washington Treaty and the (1995) Study on NATO enlargement
”.
Meetings at NATO headquarters allow
discussion
of legal issues, resources, security, protection of classified information and contribution to the common budget, based on the size of the country's economy compared to that other members of the Alliance.
Then, the candidate country must
undertake
to carry out the necessary reforms and must then address “
a letter of intent
” to the Secretary General of NATO, with “
a timetable for carrying out the reforms
”.
Finally, the final step is
the ratification
of the accession protocol by each of the member states of NATO: they transmit their acceptance of the new member to the government of the United States, depositary of the North Atlantic Treaty.
The “
one for all, all for one
” of Article 5 (solidarity in the event of aggression) only applies once ratification by all Member States has been completed.
The process took a year for the 30th member, North Macedonia.
Can a member state of NATO pose a problem?
Turkey, a member of the Alliance, has expressed reservations about the integration of Finland and Sweden, but several participants at an informal meeting of NATO foreign ministers on Sunday in Berlin expressed confidence in the possibility of reaching a consensus.
The Secretary General of NATO, the Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg, has already assured the two candidates that they would be welcomed "
with open arms
" if they decided to join the Alliance of which they are already "
partners
".
He promised them a "
rapid
" membership process and "
solutions
" to address their security concerns between the application and final membership.
Read alsoWhat is NATO, by the way?
If no third country has the right to veto NATO membership, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday called
Finland's candidacy a "
mistake ".
Moscow refuses the installation of bases of the Alliance on the territory of a country with which Russia shares a long common border.
Members of the European Union, Sweden and Finland benefit from the mutual assistance clause provided for in article 42-7 for the period of the process of ratifying their membership of NATO.
NATO member states: Albania, Germany, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Spain, Estonia, United States, France, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Norway, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Czech Republic, Romania, UK, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey.
