NATO open door policy facts for kids
In the context of the enlargement of NATO, Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty is the origin for the April 1999 statement of a "NATO open door policy".
Following the Eastern European Revolutions of 1989, countries from the former Eastern bloc became interested in joining NATO. During a March 1992 visit to Warsaw, NATO Secretary General Manfred Wörner said that the "doors to NATO are open". During the December 1994 OSSE conference in Budapest, the United States and its NATO allies stated that no European countries should be prevented from joining the alliance.
On March 12, 1999, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO as the first former Eastern Bloc states, beginning the expansion of NATO eastwards. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined on March 29, 2004.
In May 2022, Turkey announced that while fully supporting NATO's open door policy, it opposed the memberships of Finland and Sweden for allegedly supporting terrorism. On March 17, 2023, Turkey withdrew its opposition to Finnish accession to NATO, enabling Finland to become the 31st NATO member state on April 4, 2023. On July 10, 2023, Turkey dropped its objection to Swedish accession to NATO, clearing the path for Sweden to become the 32nd NATO member state.
