Cyprus ‘ready’ to delimit EEZ with Greece

Cyprus is ready to delimit its maritime boundaries with Greece, Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos said on Friday, at the end of a week in which the Libyan parliament ratified a maritime boundary agreement signed with Turkey, which both the Republic of Cyprus and Greece consider to infringe on Greek territorial waters. “We have already been undertaking this process for a long time, but it is something which will be decided at the highest level. Nicosia is ready,” he told the House finance committee as he justified his ministry’s budget for next year. Following the committee session, he said that “for our part, we have expressed our positive approach to such a possibility”. “The technical processes for us have been ready for quite some time, but you understand that these are issues where a series of political parameters must be taken into account,” he said. He added that “these issues are very delicate”, but stressed that “we will continue this discussion” with Athens. Asked where issues may arise, he said that “there are thoughts, and there is a will”, before adding that “the right time must be found”. “This is not something which concerns only Cyprus and Greece in terms of consequences and what may arise, so we must be very careful about all these issues,” he said. Cyprus has such agreements with Egypt, Israel, Lebanon The Republic of Cyprus has signed maritime delimitation agreements with Egypt, Israel, and Lebanon, with the Lebanese government having approved its maritime border with Cyprus last year. Greece, meanwhile, signed an agreement with Egypt in 2020. However, no such agreement has yet been signed with Greece. It is likely that such an agreement would conflict with claims made by Turkey to swathes of the eastern Mediterranean made by Turkey under its ‘Blue Homeland’ doctrine, with this doctrine having fuelled the country’s agreement with Libya. That agreement drew a line southeast of the Greek island of Crete, which Greece claims as its own, with the dispute sourced in the question of whether islands are entitled to a full exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Greece and the Republic of Cyprus, citing the United Nations convention on the law of the sea (Unclos), state that they are, but Turkey and Libya, believing that the convention gives too much weight to islands, state that they are not.