Mr. Chair, the choice of whether to seek to join the alliance or not is one that individual countries make. For historical reasons, neither Finland nor Sweden has chosen to seek to join the alliance. Notwithstanding that, we have very close working relationships with them. We're working especially closely with them now in view of the situation in Ukraine.
These are countries with very advanced defence capabilities. They have something to teach allied countries about the whole-of-society approaches to defence. We work extremely closely with them.
We have 40 partners and both Finland and Sweden are amongst the very closest.