Comment: Albania Risks Losing Territorial Waters to Greece at the ICJ – Exit – Explaining Albania

Greece and Albania ’ s agreement to refer a challenge over maritime borders in the ionian Sea to the International Court of Justice is likely to result in the recognition of Greece ’ south expansion of its territorial waters. By not objecting Greece ’ s decision on its service line and the doubling to 12 miles of its territorial waters, the government of Prime Minister Edi Rama has accepted the flinch of Albania ’ s territorial waters. A previous agreement on maritime boundary line between the two countries was not implemented because the Albanian Constitutional Court nullified it due to violations of the Constitution and territorial integrity. The main emergence resulting in the Court ’ s decision was the status of some rough, uninhabited Greek islands without economic life very close to the Albanian shore, which the 2009 agreement considered as greek kingdom in full effect.

The only way for a solution between the two countries after that was for an international woo to decide. This is because Albania must obey the decision of its Constitutional Court. Greece, on the early pass, has no such decision of its Constitutional Court and can act comparably more unblock. greek authorities have stated that it is not in their matter to to respect the decision of the Albanian CC, and the agreement ’ sulfur articles are not renegotiable. however, circumstances binding then were quite unlike, as Greece had not defined the baseline of its territorial waters. Under the previous conditions, the ICJ would have found Albania in a more golden side. How did we get here? The Socialist Party promised in 2013 that it would reach an agreement with Greece based on the decisiveness of the Constitutional Court of Albania. In 2018, the albanian politics had a series of negotiations with the greek government to finalize a nautical molding agreement. Former Foreign Minister Ditmir Bushati met several times with his counterpart Nikos Kotzias. “ We are amply convinced that by respecting international law, by respecting the decision of the Constitutional Court, Albania will have an agreement means more friendly and fairer than that of 2009, ” Bushati said back then. On January 30, 2018, Greek Foreign Minister Kotzias said during an interview with greek television receiver ERT that “ Albania has accepted the expansion of greek waters by 12 nautical miles from the slide, the maximal allowed by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. ”. His statement provoked a reaction from albanian civil company and President Ilir Meta, who asked the government to inform the public regarding its plan for the nautical boundary line with Greece. But early Minister Bushati denied they had reached an agreement with Greece. Following these statements, the count remained pending. In October 2020, Prime Minister Edi Rama announced that the discrepancy between Albania and Greece on the issue of the sea will be reviewed by the International Court of Justice under external nautical jurisprudence. Changing circumstances in Greece In January 2021, the Greek fantan passed the extension from 6 to 12 nautical miles of its territorial waters in the ionian Sea bays, and determined the baseline through a list of coordinates ( to read more about the coordinates of the Greek service line click here ).

Baseline determination by Greece, according to the Montego Bay Convention, entails the loss of the albanian territorial sea. here are some illustrations to show what such loss entails.
As it can be seen from the above illustrations, the service line at the Gulf of Corfu foster limits Albania ’ s territorial waters because the 12-mile extension is to be measured from the service line approved in January 2021. Another fact is that Albania lacks determined coordinates of its baselines in the ionian Sea, which leads to uncertainty in the definition of its territorial waters. Since 1990, the country has not taken any steps to establish the baseline and present coordinates in illustrations. There is a draft jurisprudence in the Assembly on designing the bay of Saranda, Butrint, Ksamil, Himara, Borsh, Qeparo and Palas as protect bays, but it has not been approved so far. The subject of this blueprint police is not at all serious as no study by relevant institutions is attached to it. hence sending the nautical quarrel to the ICJ under the above conditions may lead to a decision similar to the 2009 agreement, which was nullified by the Albanian Constitutional Court. The ICJ decision is binding as Albania has accepted its legal power on matters relating to external law. On the early hand, the Constitutional Court has no legal power to review the decision of the ICJ, because according to the constitution it can alone review the constitutionality of international agreements. What could Albania have done? The Montegobay Convention gives Albania the correctly to oppose Greece ’ s doubling of territorial waters. however, Prime Minister Edi Rama supported Greece ’ s annex and took no steps to oppose it, calling it a right field under international police. Another topic raised by the greek decision is the application of the equity principle, which gives a probability for correction of borders once a median pipeline is set. The principle aims at setting fair borders between countries.

Since entirely Greece has a baseline, the equity principle will be applied by taking only Greece ’ s baseline into account. consequently the implementation of this rationale will credibly be different and at Albania ’ s disadvantage compared to what it would have been before Greece doubled its territorial waters and set a service line, followed by the confirm of the albanian government.