Washington’s decision to get around the current international discussions and to unilaterally open international waters to the mining companies supported by the United States attracted the fears of a ruled gold rush of the 21st century, and the EU is part of many votes now calling into question the legality of the movement.
Trump's decree only intervened a few weeks after the closing of the 30th session of the International Sea Feld Authority of the UN (ISA) in Jamaica without finalizing a book of rules on the safe and sustainable exploitation of mineral resources, thus extending a global moratorium on the extraction of seabed.
The European Commission told Euronews on Monday that it “deeply regrets” the decree of the American president who “bypasses” negotiations in the ISA, which was established under the United Nations Convention on the Act of the Sea (UNCLOS).
An EU executive spokesman said that the 1982 Convention “defines the legal framework in which all the activities of the ocean and the seas must be carried out” and “reflects a balance allowing the accommodation of various interests of individual states while protecting the common interests of the international community and humanity as a whole”.
The United States has never ratified UNCTs, however, President Ronald Reagan skeptical to its creation and its subsequent attempts to join the substantial majority of countries – now 168 the EU – which signed the treaty cohered by a minority of republican legislators in the American Senate.
But the EU executive seems to share the idea widely considered that the Convention has come to represent fundamental international law based on decades of accepted standards and practice, and therefore applies to the United States by the Legal Convention.
“It is crucial to remember that its provisions reflect customary international law and thus link all states, whether or not they have accessed the agreement,” said the EU director in a statement sent by email.
“By establishing the legal order of the seas and oceans, the Convention contributes to sustainable development as well as to peace, security, cooperation and friendly relations between all nations,” said the Commission.
“First pirate exploration operation”
Douglas McCauley, professor at UC Santa Barbara and auxiliary professor at the University of California in Berkeley, said that Trump's decision was not only illegal, but intended to turn around.
“The United States has advanced to become the first operating operation of pirates in international waters,” said McCauley. “With the rules, we could have controlled minerals that China or any country or no one would take from this part of the ocean,” said the marine biologist.
Duncan Currie, legal and political advisor to the SEA Deep conservation coalition based in the United States, said that Washington’s unilateral decision was a clear violation of international law.
“This upsets more than 40 years of legal preceding in the United Nations Convention on the Act of the Sea, threatens to destabilize ocean governance in the world and is an insult to the peoples and the Pacific countries that this decision will have the most impact.”
China has taken the same line, with the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Guo Jiakun Say journalists The day after the ordinance, “the exploration and exploitation of minerals in the International Seabed Zone must be carried out in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and within the framework of the International Marine Fund authority”.
Customary international law
Trump's order can mark a peak in global tensions on dividing what remains of the world's common goods, but it was not the beginning.
Under the Biden administration, the United States has concluded an oceanographic research project of two decades – presented as the greatest of all time – to delimit nearly a million square kilometers of areas of the continental plateau extended beyond its exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical kilometers, where it claimed only rights on mineral resources.
ADVERTISEMENTThe claim of the United States in this area, joined in December 2023 and to which Trump indirectly refers in his decree, was in principle based on complex criteria set out in CNUE and “customary international law” follows that the president is now accused of seeking to circumvent.
Although China invokes this legal convention in its criticisms of the executive order of Trump, it had earlier – as well as Russia and others – questioned America's claim on its prolonged continental shelf on the grounds that Washington has never ratified CNUDDs.
Beijing's influence within the ISA – and the lack of that of Washington without – is only a reason given in the most recent (failed) Bipartite effort persuades the Congress to ratify.
