The Hungarian parliament is reportedly not expected to vote on ratifying Sweden's application to join NATO during the last week of the spring session.
“Hungary's parliament will not ratify Sweden's NATO membership before the summer recess as it has not included the vote in the agenda of next week's session, Hungarian online media reported on Wednesday.
News sites reported that parliament, dominated by nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz party, would further delay the vote after previously citing a deterioration in relations with Sweden.
Parliament's press office did not confirm the reports, saying the agenda of next week's session would be finalized at a meeting of the house committee on Thursday.
Leftist opposition lawmaker Agnes Vadai said Orban would not put the vote on Sweden's NATO accession on next week's agenda. The Swedish Foreign Ministry did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Sweden and Finland abandoned decades of military non-alignment in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year, seeking greater security by joining NATO. Finland became a NATO member in April but the process has been slower for Sweden.
Sweden has set its sights on joining at the alliance's July summit and while it has strong support from other members including the United States, both Turkey and Hungary have so far held back from ratification.
With Hungary's ratification process stranded in parliament since last July, Orban aired concerns about Sweden and Finland's NATO membership for the first time in February.
Among other criticisms, he has accused both countries of spreading ‘outright lies’ about the health of democracy and the rule of law in Hungary, although Hungarian lawmakers approved Finland's bid in late March.
Orban has been at loggerheads with European Union headquarters in Brussels for years over EU criticism of Hungary's record on democracy and rule of law standards since he took office in 2010”. -Gergely Szakacs and Nora Buli, Reuters
In a shift away from decades-long neutrality, Sweden has taken sides against Moscow in its bid for NATO membership.
Moscow has repeatedly stressed that the continual expansion of NATO would only lead to additional escalation and that military aid to Ukraine makes NATO member states de facto direct parties to the conflict.
While NATO membership for the Swiss may not make the overall security landscape of Europe any more precarious, the Nordic nation's complete abandonment of its neutrality in NATO's confrontation against the Kremlin will undoubtedly increase Sweden's own security risks, as opposed to reducing them, as Russia has consistently vowed to take countermeasures to ensure its own tactical and strategic security in response to the Western military bloc’s expansion.