Pleading for the Serpent Island: Romania to prove the rock doesn't support life

The pleadings in the second day of the lawsuit for the property rights over the Black Sea continental platform are conducted by professor James Crawford, who continues the pleading begun on Tuesday, speaking about the delimitation around the Serpent Island and by the Romanian agent in Court, Bogdan Aurescu. Pleadings are aimed at proving that the Serpent Island is inhabitable and without its own economic life, a fact that doesn’t entitle the formation to have its own continental platform and exclusive economic area.

The speech held by Crawford is a technical one, trying to prove – by interpreting the Romania – USSR border agreements and on a wide mapping documentation – that Romania and the USSR had an agreement on the sea border around the Serpent Island.

„The official report on the USSR – Romania border”, signed in Bucharest on September 27, 1949, describes the entire frontier. According to the document, the border, around the Serpent Island, goes 12 miles to the exterior of the island.

Crawford also presented six arguments against the Ukrainian objections on the frontier drawing.