United Kingdom/France
Straits of Dover Agreement
The extension of the United Kingdom territorial sea from three to 12 miles by the 1987 Territorial Sea Act' created a potential overlap of claims in the Straits of Dover, for France already claimed a 12-mile territorial sea and in the Straits the shores of the two countries are less than 24 miles apart. In 1982, in the aftermath of the Channel Arbitration,2 France and Britain agreed a continental shelf boundary in this area,3 and in 1987, by Order in Council,4 the United Kingdom utilized this existing boundary as its territorial sea limit in the Straits. However, the French Government proposed that a formal agreement be concluded defining the territor- 5 ial sea boundary in the Straits, using the relevant part of the line agreed in 1982.5 On 2 November 1988, the United Kingdom Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Sir Geoffrey Howe, and the French Foreign Minister, M. Roland Dumas, signed the Agreement on the Delimitation of the Territorial Sea in the Straits of Dover which is reproduced below at Appendix 1. The two Ministers took advantage of their meeting to issue a Joint Declaration on the regime of pas- sage through the Straits of Dover. This Declaration describes the two states' com- mitment to a regime of passage based on the transit passage regime adumbrated in Part III of the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention, which was itself based on British 6 proprosals. The Joint Declaration is reproduced in Appendix 2.6
Appendix 1
Text of the Agreement Between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of the French Republic Relating to the Delimitation of the Territorial Sea in the Straits of Dover The Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of the French Republic, Considering that the boundary delimiting the parts of the continental shelf appertaining to
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Figure 3 European Datum 1950: Syst6me Géodésique 1950