Rose-Roth Seminars

The NATO PA holds three to four seminars per year.

For two to three days, members of parliament from NATO member and partner countries meet with government officials, representatives from NATO and other international organisations, as well as experts from universities, think tanks and NGOs, to discuss one specific security issue of common interest. While seminars originally focused primarily on civil-military relations, including the democratic control of armed forces, today, they focus primarily on regional security issues in the Euro-Atlantic region and beyond. Recent themes for seminars have included stability in the Western Balkans, unresolved conflicts in the South Caucasus, Afghanistan, Central Asian security, and Arctic security, among others. 

Seminars help familiarise legislators with key security and defence issues. Most importantly, they have proved an excellent tool for involving and integrating parliamentarians from partner parliaments in Assembly activities. By bringing together parliamentarians from NATO countries with their counterparts in non-member parliaments, the Rose Roth seminars help build a sense of partnership and co-operation at the legislative level. They also help improve mutual understanding among legislators of their various problems and perspectives. Parliamentarians from NATO countries get to hear the perspective of their counterparts in partner countries, and vice versa. As importantly, parliamentarians from neighbouring partner countries meet in a context which allows for more informal interactions and discussions. Where relations between neighbours are strained, this can be one of the few opportunities for such contacts.  

The vast majority of seminars are hosted by partner parliaments, which favours these delegations’ sense of ownership of the Assembly’s processes and agenda, and allows for greater exposure of civil society in partner countries to NATO and broader defence and security issues.