On Tuesday, Albania and Greece announced that they would be taking their Ionian maritime border dispute to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for resolution. After meeting with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama in Tirana, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias said, “We have agreed to submit this case to international justice.” Rama further explained that the ICJ would be able to resolve the issue and “[join] the dots based on the [court’s] expertise and international maritime law.”
Relations between Greece and post-communist Albania have had their ups and downs, mainly over minority rights, even as both countries consider ethnic Albanians living in Greece and ethnic Greeks living in Albania as possible bridges to link the two sides. Symbolically, the Balkan neighbours have also been in a formal state of war since 1940 after Italy’s fascist forces occupied Greece via its Albanian border. By way of a 1990 declaration, the two sides resumed their friendship, after which Greece has also backed Albania’s ambitions to join the European Union.
However, tensions regarding the Ionian Sea dispute reemerged in 2009 after an agreement reached between the two sides was shot down and deemed unconstitutional by Albania’s Constitutional Court. This was after Rama’s socialist party, which was then an opposition force, challenged the deal, claiming that it cost Tirana 225 sq. kilometres of its territorial waters. Dendias is confident that the agreement reached after The Hague’s final ruling will also nullify the war between the two sides. Rama backed this sentiment, stating, “That issue will not be at our discretion, nor that of the Greek side, but of international justice and in that way we shall focus on our economic (and) regional cooperation.”
Over the past few months, Athens launched a concerted effort to delimitate its sea borders with its neighbours. Its decision to resolve the Albanian issue comes soon after reaching similar agreements with Italy in June and Egypt in August. Currently, Greece is also in conflict with Turkey on the issue of economic zones and offshore drilling activities in the waters’ crucial oil and gas reserves in the Aegean. The dispute in the eastern Mediterranean has also become quickly militarized, as countries side with Greece to curb Turkish aggression. France sent ships and planes to the region in August, and Cyprus and Italy are also engaged in military exercises off the Cypriot coast.
In mid-September, following the return of the Turkish research vessel Oruç Reis to its port at Antalya from the disputed waters, Greek officials signalled their readiness to enter exploratory talks with Ankara on the condition that it “disengage itself” from the crisis. Earlier this month, the two sides agreed to enter negotiations on the issue, but no date has been decided for the same. Simultaneously, on Tuesday, Greece ordered a 26-kilometre extension of a border wall along its Turkish frontier in an effort to deter migrants from entering the EU.
Albania and Greece Seek ICJ Resolution to Maritime Border Issue
Both sides are hopeful that a new agreement set by The Hague will also put an end to their 60-year-old formal state of war.
October 21, 2020
Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias (L) and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama. SOURCE: AMNA