Limits Marine Areas — Limit of Territorial Waters (High Adriatic)

The regulation and regulation of territorial waters is governed by certain conventions, such as the Geneva Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Conjoined Area of 1958 and the Montego Bay Convention of 1982. The sovereignty of the coastal State extends beyond the mainland and internal waters over an adjacent sea area called territorial waters (Geneva, I,1,1, UNCLOS 2.1). This sovereignty also extends to the airspace above them and to their bottom and seabed. The maximum territorial sea width is currently set at 12 miles measured from baselines (UNCLOS 3). As regards Italy, the 12-mile limit was adopted by Law No 359 of 14 August 1974. In the Upper Adriatic, the territorial waters limit was implemented by the Treaty of Osimo of 10 November 1975 between Yugoslavia and Italy, an agreement concerning the settlement of pending issues between the two countries whose validity was confirmed by Slovenia as the successor State of the former Yugoslavia. The Treaty (Law No 73 of 14 March 1977) lays down the limits of the territorial waters of the two countries in the Gulf of Trieste.