Last holdout Hungary ratifies Swedish NATO bid

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00:00 Today there's been a big step taken towards Sweden joining NATO. Within the

00:05 last hour the Parliament in Hungary has ratified Sweden's bid after months of

00:09 delay. Unanimous support among all NATO members is required to admit new

00:14 countries and Hungary had been the only member of the alliance that hadn't given

00:18 its backing. But today's vote in Parliament did pass after the two

00:23 countries signed an arms deal last week. Well let's get the very latest from

00:28 Budapest. Laurence Labriere joins me on the program. Laurence first of all just

00:33 tell us I mentioned that arms deal is that why Hungary has given this green

00:39 light today? No it isn't there are other reasons in fact shortly before the vote

00:46 in Parliament Hungarian PM Viktor Orban said that before accepting a new member

00:51 into the alliance Hungary had to settle its dispute with Sweden. What kind of

00:57 dispute was he referring to? He was referring to the fact that Sweden had

01:00 repeatedly criticized the authoritarian drift in Hungary and Viktor Orban used

01:06 this criticism as a pretext to delay the accession of Sweden. The Hungarian

01:11 opposition has accused Viktor Orban to play Vladimir Putin's game because the

01:17 Hungarian PM has delayed European sanctions against Russia even if he

01:22 ended up voting for them. The same goes for the 50 billion European aid package

01:28 to Ukraine. Viktor Orban did vote for did approve that package in the end but each

01:34 time it caused a substantial delay and the Hungarian opposition says it is a

01:39 great service that Orban provides to Vladimir Putin whose objective is to

01:44 divide Europe and to divide NATO.

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