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NATO

Turkey approves Sweden’s Nato application as Erdogan signs ratification

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has signed off on his parliament's ratification of Sweden as a Nato member.

Published: 25 January 2024 20:55 CET
Turkey approves Sweden's Nato application as Erdogan signs ratification
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left, and Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban, right. Hungary has yet to ratify Sweden. Photo: AP Photo/Denes Erdos

Turkey’s government newspaper on Thursday published a protocol on Sweden’s accession to Nato, a final technical step in Ankara’s ratification of the Nordic nation’s bid to join the US-led alliance.

The Official Gazette’s publication of the law on Sweden’s accession to the alliance, which the Turkish parliament approved on Tuesday, ends a nearly two-year saga that tested Ankara’s relations with its Western allies.

Erdogan had earlier signed the document, meaning that Turkey has completed all its required steps.

EXPLAINED:

Turkey’s green light leaves Hungary as the last holdout in an accession process that Sweden and Finland, which had adhered to decades of military non-alignment, began in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago.

Finland became the 31st nation of the alliance last April.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on Thursday he was ready to meet his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban to help pave the way for Budapest’s quick approval of the bid.

Nato membership applications require unanimous ratifications by all alliance members.

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ECONOMY

Swedish inflation drops below 4 percent for first time in two years

Sweden's consumer price index fell to 3.9 percent in February, reinforcing predictions that the central bank will keep lowering interest rates this year.

Published: 15 May 2024 09:25 CEST
Swedish inflation drops below 4 percent for first time in two years

The yearly inflation rate according to the consumer price index (CPI) was down from 4.1 percent in January, according to number crunchers Statistics Sweden.

Experts had predicted an inflation rate of 4.0 percent, according to Bloomberg.

“The effect of increasing interest rates for household’s mortgages is easing, which can explain the decreasing inflation rate in April,” Statistics Sweden analyst Carl Mårtensson said in a statement.

Inflation measured instead according to the CPIF metric – the consumer price index with interest rate fluctuations taken out of the equation – meanwhile rose slightly from 2.2 to 2.3 percent.

However, that still beats expectations, which had predicted CPIF inflation of 2.4 percent.

YOUR SWEDISH MONEY:

That puts it slightly above the Riksbank’s inflation target of two percent, and experts predicted that Wednesday’s inflation news strengthened the likelihood that the bank will cut interest rates further.

The Riksbank last week slashed Sweden’s so-called policy rate for the first time in eight years.

The policy rate is the central bank’s main monetary policy tool. It decides which rates Swedish banks can deposit in and borrow money from the Riksbank, which in turn affects the banks’ own interest rates on savings, loans and mortgages.

If bank interest rates are high, it’s expensive to borrow money, which means people spend less and as a result inflation drops.

But now that inflation appears to be holding relatively steady around the two percent target, it means that the bank might be able to start lowering the policy rate yet again.

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