NATO Parliamentary Assembly

NATO Parliamentary Assembly

Emblem
Abbreviation	NATO PA
Formation	1955
Type	International parliament
Location	Brussels, Belgium
President	Paolo Alli
Vice Presidents	Metin Lutfi Baydar Joseph A. Day Rasa Juknevičienė Tchetin Kazak Sverre Myrli
Parent organization	NATO
Website	www.nato-pa.int

Founded in 1955, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (NATO PA) serves as the consultative interparliamentary organisation for the North Atlantic Alliance. Its current President is Paolo Alli from Italy. Its current Secretary General is David Hobbs from the United Kingdom, he has been in this position since January 2008 .

The idea to engage Alliance Parliamentarians in collective deliberations on the problems confronting the transatlantic partnership first emerged in the early 1950s and took shape with the creation of an annual conference of NATO parliamentarians in 1955. The Assembly’s creation reflected a desire on the part of legislators to give substance to the premise of the Washington Treaty of 1949 (also known as the North Atlantic Treaty) that NATO was the practical expression of a fundamentally political transatlantic alliance of democracies.

The foundation for cooperation between NATO and the NATO-PA was strengthened in December 1967 when the North Atlantic Council (NAC) authorized the NATO Secretary General to study how to achieve closer cooperation between the two bodies. As a result of these deliberations over the following year, the NATO Secretary General, after consultation with the NAC, implemented several measures to enhance the working relationship between NATO and the Assembly. These measures included the Secretary General providing a response to all Assembly recommendations and resolutions adopted in its Plenary Sessions.

In response to the fall of the Berlin wall at the end of the 1980s, the NATO-PA broadened its mandate by developing close relations with political leaders in Central and East European countries. Those ties, in turn, greatly facilitated the dialogue that NATO itself embarked upon with the region's governments.

Bringing together legislators from all the member states of the Atlantic Alliance, the NATO PA provides a link between NATO and the parliaments of its member nations.

At the same time, it facilitates parliamentary awareness and understanding of key security issues and contributes to a greater transparency of NATO policies. Crucially, it helps maintain and strengthen the transatlantic relationship, which underpins the Atlantic Alliance.