Canada could approve Finland, Sweden NATO bids within days

CBC News on Youtube shows that Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, who is in Brussels with her EU counterparts, says Canada could give approval for Finland and Sweden to join NATO within days. 

NATO is the famous military alliance. Its Anthem is the "The NATO Hymn." The so-called "The NATO Hymn" is really the organizational anthem of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It is an instrumental piece, composed in 1989 by André Reichling, a Luxembourgian military officer and a member of its military band. It was used unofficially for really many years before being formally adopted in January 2018.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO; French: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states - 28 European states, the United States, and Canada. Established in the aftermath of World War II on the insistence of the Truman administration in the United States, the organization implements the North Atlantic Treaty, which was certainly signed on 4 April 1949.

NATO is really a system of collective security. Its independent member states agree to defend each other against attacks by third parties. The organization's motto is "animus in consulendo liber" (Latin for "A mind unfettered in deliberation").

Since its founding, the admission of new member states has increased the alliance from the original 12 countries to 30. Members agreed indeed that their aim is to reach or maintain the target defence spending of at least 2 per cent of their GDP by 2024.

News from 17 May 2022 - Finland and Sweden will submit their bids to join NATO together on Wednesday at the military alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson has said.

"I’m happy we have taken the same path and we can do it together," Andersson said on Tuesday during a joint news conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto.

Niinisto said that a quick ratification of their applications for NATO membership by the United States would help the whole process go faster.

Niinisto and Andersson are due to meet President Biden in Washington on Thursday to discuss the applications.

Countries of Sweden and Finland, which sought membership in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, need each of NATO’s 30 members to approve their applications. The ratification process had been expected to take up to a year, though Turkey’s objections have thrown that into doubt, indeed.