The president of the United States, Joe Biden, will undertake in the coming days a European tour that will take you to London, to Vilnius for the NATO leaders’ summit and to Helsinki, the White House reported this Sunday in a statement.
The president’s European tour will take place between July 9 and 13 and will begin in the United Kingdom.
As detailed by the White House, Biden is scheduled to meet British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in Londonand with King Charles III of England, in what will be the first meeting between the two since the monarch was crowned in May of this year.
The last time Biden and the then Prince of Wales saw each other was in November 2021 during the COP26 climate summit held in the Scottish city of Glasgow.
After visiting the UK, Biden will go to the Lithuanian city of Vilnius to participate in the NATO leaders’ summit.
From there, the US president will head to Helisnki, in a stop with great symbolic content to show Washington’s support for Finland, a new member of NATO.
Specifically, Biden will participate on July 13 in Helsinki in a summit between the US and the leaders of the Nordic countries (Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Denmark).
Finland became the thirty-first full member of NATO in April this year after completing the membership process requested as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which implies that the country is covered by Article 5 of defense Alliance collective.
Finland and Sweden asked to join NATO in May 2022although only the former has been able to complete the ratification process, since Sweden’s membership application has been blocked by Turkey and Hungary.
Turkey accuses Sweden of having a too lax stance with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a guerrilla group that began an armed struggle against the Turkish state in 1984 to demand more autonomy for the Kurds and is considered a terrorist group. by Turkey, Sweden, the European Union and the United States.
For its part, Hungary has been more opaque about the specific reasons why it is blocking Turkey’s entry, but has expressed its disagreement with the criticisms that Sweden has made about the erosion of the rule of law under the government of the Hungarian prime minister, the ultranationalist Viktor Orban.
Precisely, Biden plans to meet on Wednesday of next week at the White House with the Prime Minister of Sweden, Ulf Kristersson, to discuss the accession process.
With information from Efe.
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Source: La Opinion
