EU Parliament approve NATO membership.

(RT) ⸻ The Finnish parliament on Wednesday overwhelmingly voted in favor of joining NATO, before Hungary and Türkiye had the chance to ratify the Nordic nation's accession. The bill was supported by 184 MPs of the 200-seat parliament, while only seven voted against it and one abstained. The Left Alliance MPs Markus Mustajarvi and Johannes Yrttiaho expressed their concerns over Finland not setting any conditions for its NATO membership regarding a potential deployment of nuclear weapons to its territory. Finland's foreign and defense ministers assured the MPs that NATO membership would not change Helsinki's stance on nuclear weapons. The results of the vote were hailed by Finnish parliament speaker Matti Vanhanen, who called it a "historic decision" comparable to Finland joining the EU in the 1990s. The parliament of Finland has ratified its bid to join NATO, putting it on the map of Europe. The vote comes as NATO itself is yet to accept Finland into its ranks. 28 members of the bloc have ratified the bid of the Nordic nation and neighboring Sweden, while Hungary and Türkiye are yet to do so. The parliament justified the move by saying it wanted to finalize its part of the process before the elections scheduled for early April. Budapest indicated it might need more time for its lawmakers to vote on the bids by Sweden and Finland to join the Western military bloc, but on Wednesday, MPs started the ratification process for the Nordic nations' bids following calls by Hungary's president for it to be sped up. Ankara has previously expressed reluctance to allow either of the two nations to join NATO due to their support for Kurdish groups that Ankara considers to be terrorists, but the three nations signed an agreement last June to address those concerns and pave the way for approving NATO's expansion.