IL PASSAGGIO IN TRANSITO. SPUNTI SULLE BOCCHE DI BONIFACIO E SU ALTRI STRETTI A 40 ANNI DALLA FIRMA DELLA CONVENZIONE ONU SUL DIRITTO DEL MARE

The regime of international straits was one of the most contentious issues at the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea. It was the balancing of the possibility for coastal states to extend the territorial sea beyond the limits accepted under the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone. The result, contained in Part III of the 1982 Montego Bay Convention on the Law of the Sea (or, at least, its most common interpretation) affects the powers of coastal states to provide solutions to extremely relevant matters, such as, and in particular, environmental issues, as is evidenced by the debate on transit passage through the Straits of Bonifacio. Recently, moreover, debate on the compatibil-ity of the construction of bridges across straits used for international navigation with the free-dom of navigation affirmed by the Montego Bay Convention has again become topical.
The question is whether the unconditional expansion of transit passage justified in the name of freedom of navigation could be regarded as the expression of a «maritime neo-colonialism».