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TERRITORIAL CLAIMS OF ROMANIA

Snake island Dispute

The continental shelf around Snake Island is a subject of conflict that was brought before the International Court of Justice. The roots of the conflict go back to the XX century. According to the Peace Treaties of 1918 and 1920 after WWI Snake Island was considered a part of Romania. There was no mention about it in any peace treaties after WWII. In 1948, the Soviet troops occupied Snake Island and moved the Romanian boundary in the Danube Delta towards the west in favor of the USSR, which was strongly disputed by Romania. After 1991, Ukraine took control over the island, although Romania consistently claimed it should be included in its territory. The 1997 basic treaty concluded by the two countries stipulates that negotiations on the shelf's delimitation will continue and, if no agreement is reached, the sides will be able to appeal to the International Court of Justice in The Hague as a last resort. Ukraine agreed under that treaty to deploy no "aggressive weapons" on Snake Island, and, more importantly, to consider it "uninhabited" [7, p.335].

But several years later 10 million tons of oil and natural gas were discovered under the seabed nearby. BP and Royal Dutch/Shell signed prospect contracts with Ukraine, while Total with Romania. And that was the period when the policy of both Ukraine and Romania towards Snake Island changed rapidly. Both countries became interested in this territory and did their best in order to obtain it.

Romania's position was that Snake Island should be defined only as a rocky outcropping, and therefore need not be considered important enough to be a factor in drawing the Romanian-Ukrainian maritime border.

Ukraine's position was that Snake Island should be defined as an island, as its name suggests, which would mean that the continental shelf around it would fall to Ukraine's possession. That is why Ukraine refused from its obligation taken in 1997 (to remain it uninhabited) but started to resettle people there, regularly transported water to it, and launched a ship to provide regular service between the mainland and the island. The island was supplied with navigation equipment, including a 150-year old lighthouse. Electric power was provided by a dual wind/diesel power station. The island also had such civil infrastructure as a post office, a bank branch (of Ukrainian bank "Aval"), a first-aid station, satellite television, a phone network, a cell phone tower, and an Internet link.

More than 20 rounds of negotiation meetings conducted thus far between Bucharest and Kyiv produced no results. On 16 September 2004, Romania brought a case against Ukraine before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) relating to a dispute concerning the establishment of a single maritime boundary between the two states in the Black Sea, thereby delimiting the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) appertaining to them. Romania requested the ICJ to draw the boundary in accordance with international law.



On February 3, 2009,the Court also reached the conclusion that Snake Island should be disregarded in drawing the provisional equidistance line. In this case, the Court indicated that its decision was mostly based on the fact that Snake Island could not be considered to form part of “the coast” of Ukraine, in view of the considerable distance between the island and the mainland coast. As a consequence:

To count Snake Island as a relevant part of the coast would amount to grafting extraneous element onto Ukraine’s coastline; the consequence would be a judicial re-fashioning off geography, which neither the law now practice of maritime delimitation authorizes (para. 149) [8].

As a result Romania received almost 80 percent of disputed maritime domain in the Black Sea which has increased its continental shelf in a region rich in oil and gas reserves.

The conflict over the use of Danube Delta

The dispute over the use of the transport potential of theDanube Delta has further deteriorated the relations between Romania and Ukraine. In 2004 the Ukrainian government began developing the Danube-Black Sea deep water navigation route in the Ukrainian part of the Danube Delta on the Bystroye canal [9]. The objective of this project, which connects the Danube’s Kilia arm with the Black Sea, is to increase the volume of goods transported via Ukrainian ports on the Danube. The Ukrainian project, which claims to offer a higher capacity, two-way traffic and lower fees for ships, represents a direct challenge to Romania’s monopoly of goods transported on the Danube Delta and an economic threat to Romania’s canal built further upstream which links the Danube to the Black Sea. Estimates suggests that Romania might lose up to 1,5 million dollars annually as international shipping could use the alternative cheaper Ukrainian route to the Sulina branch of Danube River Delta. Romania claimed, that the Ukraine’s canal was threatening the unique eco-system of the Danube Delta. In 2008, Bucharest decided to take the dispute with Ukraine outside bilateral relations and put it on the agenda of the Espoo Convention Implementation Committee (which evaluates the impact on the natural environment in the cross-border context) and of the EU council of ministers for the environment in order to cause these bodies recommend Ukraine cease work on the development of the channel. As a result of Bucharest’s allegations the further development of the Bystroye canal has been temporally blocked [10, p.24].

Another disputable territory is Maikan Island, which belongs to Ukraine. It is situated on the Danube, where the current of the river was agreed to set the Ukrainian-Romanian border. However, as a consequence of a natural change in the trajectory of the current to Ukraine’s disadvantage, the island is now on the Romanian side of the border, and Bucharest insists that Kyiv should relinquish its rights to this island [9].

 

The Conflict over Southern Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina

Since the collapse of the USSR and the emergence of an independent Ukraine Romanian politicians have on numerous occasions called into question the legality of the change of the Romanian-Soviet border in 1940, as a consequence of which Bessarabia (now the Republic of Moldova), Southern Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina on the Black Sea, which had belonged to the Kingdom of Romania, became part of the USSR.

In May 2010, President Basescu thus stated: “Kiev should not forget about the return of Southern Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, territories which the former USSR annexed from Romania after the Second World War.” In January 2006, Basescu had declared “the minimal policy of Romania is for the unification of the Romanian nation to take place within the EU.” The notion “minimal policy” assumes the existence of a maximal policy that presumably goes way beyond mere unification with Moldova. The reality of the project is apparent in the decision to grant Romanian citizenship to all residents of the territories belonging to the pre-1940 Greater Romania and their descendants, up to the third generation including the denizens of Bukovina (Chernovtsy) and southern Bessarabia (Budjak) [11].

The official justification for facilitated access to citizenship for persons who have lost Romanian citizenship “against their will or for other reasons not imputably to them” is mainly framed in the language of justice. The post-communist state assumed the duty to restore Romanian citizenship, albeit upon individual request, to all those who had been unjustly deprived of citizenship status. In this context,Traian Basescu stated that It is not citizen Dumitrescu from [the Moldovan city of] Cahul who has decided to lose his [Romanian] nationality, it is Stalin who has decided for him [12, p. 339].

Any conflict between Ukraine and Romania might jeopardize not only the revision of border between two States. Both Ukraine and Romania are objects of geopolitical influence of more powerful players. Therefore, the Ukrainian-Romanian conflict can be deliberately used as an element of destabilization of the situation in South-Eastern Europe with inevitable engagement of Russia and the European Union. That is why Ukraine should review its policy towards Romania and build it based on the following steps:

1. Preservation of Moldova as a buffer between Ukraine and Romania. The viability of Moldova in the long run will determine the level of conflict in relations between Kiev and Bucharest. The disappearance of Moldova from the political map of the world automatically transfers the motion vector of Romania to Ukraine.

2. Ukraine should strengthen its position in Transnistria, as in the case of Romania’s absorption of Moldova Transnistria becomes the last buffer which separates Ukraine and Romania.

3. The development of economic projects in the region will integrate the countries of South-Eastern Europe, thus reducing the level of conflict.


Date: 2015-12-24; view: 853


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