Cyprus, Greece and the European Union have rejected the Libyan parliament’s approval of a 2019 maritime memorandum between Turkey and Libya, saying it violates the sovereign rights of other states and is null and void.
Greece said it had informed its partners and allies and would take every appropriate step to safeguard its sovereign rights. Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis discussed the development on Tuesday afternoon with his Egyptian counterpart, Badr Abdelatty, having earlier spoken to Foreign Minister Konstantinos Kombos.
The approval has brought the issue back to the fore because it affects the agreement between Greece and Egypt delimiting their exclusive economic zones (EEZ). Gerapetritis and Abdelatty discussed the memorandum’s implications for security and stability in the Eastern Mediterranean.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in a joint statement with Antonio Costa, said the agreement infringed the sovereign rights of third states, did not comply with the Law of the Sea and was null and void. “We reaffirm our solidarity with Greece and Cyprus,” she said.
Cyprus’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the Libyan parliament’s decision. It said the memorandum violated the sovereign rights of third states and ran counter to the principles of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and customary international law on the rights of islands to maritime zones, including an exclusive economic zone and a continental shelf. The ministry said it therefore continued to regard the memorandum as illegal, null and void, with no legal effect whatsoever on third states.
Greece’s Foreign Ministry said the vote by Libya’s House of Representatives did not change the memorandum’s illegal, null and void character. It called the document misleadingly named, saying it ran counter to the international law of the sea and infringed the sovereign rights of states in the region.
Geography and the international law of the sea “do not change through unilateral, legally baseless parliamentary decisions”, the ministry said. It noted that Turkey and Libya have no opposite or adjacent coasts that could provide a legal basis for delimiting maritime zones between them.
The ministry repeated that the memorandum ignores Greek islands and their rights to maritime zones under UNCLOS and customary international law. It urged the Libyan side to refrain from any action that breaches international law and undermines stability in the Eastern Mediterranean.
It contrasted the memorandum with the maritime delimitation agreements Greece has signed with Egypt and Italy, which it said showed the country’s respect for the international law of the sea and for the sovereign rights of neighbouring states.
