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On 13 November 2004, the North Atlantic Council participated for the first time in a session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, which was held in Venice, Italy, and marked the Assembly’s 50th anniversary.
On 13 November 2004, the North Atlantic Council participated for the first time in a session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, which was held in Venice, Italy, and marked the Assembly’s 50th anniversary.
The five-day special session, 12-16 November, brought together close to 300 parliamentarians from North America and Europe for discussions on a wide range of issues currently affecting the Transatlantic Alliance.
This included Afghanistan and Iraq, terrorism, NATO's capabilities and partnerships, the threat from weapons of mass destruction and the relationship between NATO and the European Union.
An important role for parliamentarians
The highlight of the session was the first ever joint meeting of the North Atlantic Council – NATO’s senior policy-making body – and the Parliamentary Assembly.
Speaking at the opening of the meeting, NATO Secretary General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer said parliamentarians had an important role to play in NATO’s transformation and in bolstering support for its new missions.
“Today everyone talks about the new security environment. But I submit that large parts of our publics have not yet absorbed the full implications of these changes,” the Secretary General said. He challenged parliamentarians to “raise their voice” in explaining why missions in faraway places like Afghanistan mattered for security at home.
“As parliamentarians, you can also help to make sure that defence and security are allocated enough resources. And you can urge that this money is spent in the right way – on capabilities that we actually need and use, rather than on Cold War-type armies,” Mr. De Hoop Scheffer said.
The NATO Parliamentary Assembly is an inter-parliamentary organisation of legislators from the member countries of the North Atlantic Alliance as well as 13 associate members. The Assembly provides a critical forum for international parliamentary dialogue on an array of security, political and economic matters. Its principal objective is to foster mutual understanding among Alliance parliamentarians of the key security challenges facing the transatlantic partnership.