From the Conference of Members of Parliament from NATO Countries to the North Atlantic Assembly: the development and consolidation of the Atlantic interparliamentary forum during its first two decades of activity

Compared to the founding process of other interparliamentary bodies established in the post-war period, that of the North Atlantic Assembly – now known as the NATO Parliamentary Assembly – was distinguished by certain distinctive features. First and foremost, the fact that the Assembly was not established through the formal signing of a treaty, but developed, essentially, thanks to the initiative of small groups of parliamentarians who were interested both in establishing a permanent platform for dialogue between representatives of Western countries and in promoting – within the framework of NATO – closer political and economic cooperation among allied nations. Building on these premises, this study therefore aims to analyse the development of the Assembly during its first twenty years of activity, reconstructing the various initiatives, the projects devised and the events that helped define its international role and the nature of the relations it maintained with NATO during the Cold War period.