Legal patchwork and national borders in the Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean is a particularly vulnerable sea due to its morphology and its geographical position, and it is a highly complex basin also from a legal point of view. This paper highlights some legal issues emerging from state and international practice that are destined to influence the future developments of the legal regime of the Mediterranean Sea. In particular, the focus is on the legal fragmentation and uncertainty related to national regulations and actions in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) that can entail a number of risks for an effective and durable protection of the marine ecosystem. Indeed, the legal patchwork of the maritime zones in which the basin is divided and the existing and potential conflicts on the delimitation of those zones between the coastal states can undermine national or even international efforts to protect the marine environment and its resources, thus causing negative and irreversible effects on the whole planet ecosystem. This paper is complementary to the video presented by the author at Blue Planet Economy (BPE) European Maritime Forum 2021.