Friday, March 29

Morocco and Spain negotiate the delimitation of the waters with the “Treasure Island of the Canary Islands” as a backdrop


The coastal states, those with a coastline, have a territorial sea that cannot extend beyond 12 nautical miles (22 kilometers), a contiguous space for sanitary and fiscal purposes, and an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) that reaches up to the 200 miles (370 km). On this last demarcation, nations have rights to explore, manage resources and can even prohibit third parties from any activity. When the EEZ of two neighboring countries overlaps, both territories, although not bound, must negotiate. And that is what Spain and Morocco will do starting this week, as announced by the president of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres.

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There are around 100 kilometers between the easternmost point of the Archipelago and Morocco, so there is not enough ocean for a single EEZ for both regions. Until then, the median criterion has been used as a frame of reference. rough way, it is as if a cake were split in two due to the lack of agreement between those who claim it. A kind of equidistant line between Gran Tarajal and Juby in the Tarfaya corridor. The Spanish government and the Alawite kingdom had not discussed this matter for 15 years. The Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, has confirmed that the Islands will have a representative at the negotiating table.

There are those who might think that an imaginary straight line in the middle would be enough to draw the delimitation of territorial waters. In this case, the principle of equidistance would be applied. Until now it has been done this way and that is why it has always been said that the maritime border between Morocco and the Canary Islands is in fact, but not in law, regardless of the claims that each one has outlined. “Neither we can force them to accept our position nor they us. We have to reach an agreement,” says Concepción Escobar Hernández, professor of Public International Law at the National University of Distance Education (UNED) and member of the International Law Commission.



The problem is that Morocco is no longer interested in the principle of equidistance; now he wants a fairness rule to be established, which is not the same thing. What it intends is that the line that divides the EEZ into two takes into consideration other aspects, such as the length of the coast, the volume of population or the submerged surface. “Applying this norm, Morocco would correspond to a greater proportion”, points out Marta Iglesias Berlanga, professor in the Department of International, Ecclesiastical Law and Philosophy of Law at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).

As collected by a study titled Canary Islands and the foreseeable expansion of its continental shelf: the difficult balance between Spain, Morocco and Western Sahara, by Rafael García Pérez, from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), this “manifest inequality” between the Archipelago and the Moroccan state would result in a ratio of 5.3 to 1 in favor of Morocco (between capes Sim and Dakhla ). “It is hard for us to imagine the difficulties that a future bilateral negotiation will face” on this issue, the article highlights. It remains to be seen whether the recent Copernican turn in Spain’s foreign policy, recognizing Morocco’s position on Western Sahara, lowers the claims of the neighboring country. Or if the Moroccan state’s constant search for oil multiplies its interests.

the other discussion

As a backdrop to this main controversy is what is known as the “Treasure Island of the Canary Islands”, Mount Tropic, which is not even within the Spanish EEZ, but it could be affirmed, as has been indicated by the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain (IGME), which is an extension of the “grandmothers of the Canary Islands”, a chain of seamounts that would house huge quantities of strategic minerals for the ecological transition of the future, as revealed by several expeditions.



“Tropic is a point, a great volcanic building in which British researchers found tellurium”, a rare but highly prized material for the manufacture of solar panels, for example, reasons José Mangas, professor of Crystallography and Mineralogy at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC) and within the Institute of Oceanography and Global Change (IOCAG). Mangas has been studying the so-called rare earths for around 30 years, which have also been found in the rest of the seamounts around the Islands.

“The key concept is that of polymetallic manganese crusts”, continues the expert. “These contain cobalt, nickel, copper, rare earths… Components that are formed by deep ocean currents. Every 1,000 years, because of this, a millimeter of crusting takes place. They have to spend thousands and thousands of years to form those crusts that we see today.



Tropic is located about 250 nautical miles (about 460 kilometers) from the Canary Islands, outside the Spanish EEZ, in international waters. The seamount is part of the international seabed and ocean floor area, a common heritage of humanity managed by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), recalls Berlanga. In short, it means that Tropic does not belong to any state. And that, if it is exploited (the technology capable of doing so has not yet emerged and environmental groups are struggling to protect the place), it should be done in accordance with what the ISA establishes.

In 2014, the national government presented to the United Nations (UN) a request for expansion of its continental shelf, that can expand up to 350 miles, and thus get the most coveted seamount of all. In fact, Spain endorsed the arguments of the IGME, and defended that “the natural prolongation of the submerged continental mass in the western area of ​​the Canary Islands extends beyond 200 nautical miles”.

In the presentation, coordinated by the deputy director of the IGME, Luis Somoza, the State acknowledges that it will have to negotiate with Portugal the expansion of the platform to the north due to the presence of the Wild Islands, a Portuguese archipelago, and to the south with the “Third party rights that may be claimed in due course”, using a safeguard clause given the uncertainty of the future of Western Sahara.



The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) has not yet responded to the Spanish petition. Escobar says that it is a “very small” working group and there are many presentations. The request from Spain ranks 77th and the last recommendation issued, as of 2019, was number 32 (March 2017). “The commission attends by scrupulous order of arrivals. There is a while left for them to tell us something, ”adds Berlanga.

Before that “time” ends, Morocco could submit its own request for expansion of the continental shelf. What’s more, you’re running out of time if you want to do it. After having expressed his consent to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), he had until 2017, but requested an exceptional five-year extension that ends in May 2022, in a few weeks.

On some occasion, the Moroccan kingdom has declared its intention to include the waters of Western Sahara in its request, basically because otherwise it would not be able to expand its continental shelf (it has the Canary Islands in front of it) and because that way it would add more salt to the wound. of the Saharawi people.

“These texts intend to include the maritime space off the coast of the Sahara in the national legal arsenal to cement Morocco’s legal guardianship over those waters,” argued the Rabat Government Council on July 6, 2017. Three years later, in 2020, the Moroccan Upper House approved two maritime delimitation laws that directly affect Canary and Saharawi waters.



To date, everything points to the fact that if the Alawite nation presented a request to the CLCS, it would reject it, recall the experts in International Law consulted by this newsroom. “There is a risk that the claim will be disregarded as the problem of the Sahara has not been legally resolved. Because the Saharawi waters belong to that future state that could be built”, argues Berlanga.

“The commission is not going to accept it. In the UN there is no doubt. Morocco also asked at the time to manage the airspace of Western Sahara and they said no”, adds Juan Soroeta, professor of Public International Law and International Relations at the University of the Basque Country who has been working on the conflict for 30 years.

The two experts argue the latest judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) that knocked down Morocco’s trade and fishing agreements with the EU in Saharan waters. For Soroeta, the Luxembourg Court has established jurisprudence on the controversy. For Berlanga, justice has clearly stated that the Sahara is a people pending decolonization and that it has the right to exercise a self-determination referendum.

Both believe that a discussion about it has no place in the current scenario. “Spain will be able to negotiate with Morocco, but never at the moment in which the latter introduces the issue of Saharawi waters”, Berlanga clarifies. “If they sign an agreement on this matter, they would be violating international law. Legally, Spain could find itself in trouble”, insists Soroeta.



Even so, Morocco has shown to be patient and to be very well positioned within the Arab world, even counting on the support of the United States. An expansion of the continental shelf that includes the waters of the Sahara would collide head-on with the interests of Spain in Monte Tropic. In the hypothetical case that the two countries advance in their requests, they would be forced to negotiate again.

“It would be as if two neighbors disputed the boundaries of two farms,” ​​concludes Eloy Ruiloba, professor of Public International Law at the University of Malaga and author of one of the thesis Special circumstances and fairness in the delimitation of maritime spaces. “If there are economic interests, you’ll see how quickly they come to an agreement”, without ruling out the possibility that both countries jointly exploit the resources of the seamount.



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