Inter-parliamentary cooperation and its administrative backing : the experience of the French National Assembly

Abstract

The international relations are characterized today by an "historical" intensification of all exchanges with a multiplication of cooperation programs- bilateral as well as multilateral. The range of the parliamentary contacts increases on the same way.

The present exercise tries to enumerate the new principles upon which these relations are based and the ways used to reach the objectives. The author underlines also the will of the National Assembly to be more and more associated to some activities, which are new to her (administrative backing to cooperation, missions of observation for elections organized abroad, international conferences). The administrative backing of the interparliamentary diplomacy has been intensified and, to a large extent, centralized.