All EU member states condemn Turkey-Libya maritime deal as ‘null and void’

All 27 EU member states have backed a joint statement rejecting the Turkey-Libya maritime memorandum, which the EU said on Wednesday, “violates the sovereign rights of third States” and “does not comply with the Law of the Sea”. The statement, issued by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, said the 2019 memorandum is “null and void and cannot produce legal consequences for third States”. The EU said it “deeply regrets” its ratification by the Libyan parliament on 20 October. The bloc said its position was “firm and clear” and had been set out in European Council conclusions in December 2019 and repeated in June 2025. It said it has a strategic interest in a stable and secure Eastern Mediterranean and called on all countries to respect the sovereign rights of every member state, in line with EU law and international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Kallas added that good neighbourly relations and progress on the Cyprus settlement process were of high importance. European Council president Antonio Costa and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen offered “solidarity” to Greece and Cyprus. They said the agreement “does not comply with the law of the sea” and reiterated the EU’s “well-known position against any outside interference in Libya”. The Libyan parliament voted unanimously on Tuesday to adopt the agreement. It states that the exclusive economic zones of Libya and Turkey share a border in the Mediterranean, located south-east of the Greek island of Crete. Turkey signed the deal in 2019 with the Libyan government of national accord, but it had not been ratified by Libya’s legislature until now. The government of national unity replaced that administration in 2021 and is the only internationally recognised government of Libya. Turkey’s MIT intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin was in Libya on Tuesday to meet Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah. The Cypriot foreign ministry called the memorandum “illegal, null and void”, while Athens said, “geography and the international law of the sea do not change with unilateral, legally unfounded parliamentary decisions”. Both countries are signatories to the UN convention on the law of the sea, though Turkey is not, and Libya signed it in 1984 but never ratified it.