ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on two questions that have been the center of fierce controversies in regard to the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ): first, that of its legal nature, and second, that of military uses. The EEZ is a relatively new institution that has caused a revolution in the law of the sea and in the traditional dichotomy of territorial sea, a domain of the coastal state–and high seas–a field of nobody's or of everybody's domain, or of common use. The mere utilization of these two concepts, conferred by the convention solely on the coastal state in the EEZ, would be enough to conclude that the zone is an area of national jurisdiction. Something similar transpired in the Second Committee, where the delegates of some developing countries put forward several proposals for the protection of the national security of the coastal state in its EEZ against the military uses of other states.