25
AEGEAN SEA
(JUDGMENT)
Permanent Court there observed that the question whether a certain
matter is or is not solely within the jurisdiction of a State is an essentially
relative question and depends upon "the development of international
relations". It pointed out that a matter whch is not, in principle, regulated
by international law and is thus a matter within the State's domestic
jurisdiction, will cease to be such if the State has undertaken obligations
towards other States with respect to that matter. Consequently, and in the
light of historical circumstances now to be described, it is hardly conceivable that Greece intended to reduce the scope of its "territorial status"
reservation by integrating it into its "domestic jurisdiction" reservation.
60. Greece's main preoccupation in the years following the First World
War, so the Court was informed, was to guard against the revival of
Bulgarian aspirations to recover direct access to the Aegean Sea which it
had lost as a result of the territorial changes effected by the peace treaties.
By the Treaty of Neuilly of 27 November 1919, Bulgaria had renounced al1
its rights and titles over areas of Thrace, but the Principal Allied and
Associated Powers at the same time "undertook to ensure the economic
outlets of Bulgaria to the Aegean Sea" (Art. 48). Article 4 of the Treaty of
Sèvres of 10 August 1920 relating to Thrace, put into force by Protocol
XVI of the Lausanne Conference,provided that Greece "in order to ensure
to Bulgaria free access to the Aegean Sea" recognized her freedom of
transit "over the tenitories and in the ports assigned to Greece under the
present Treaty". The expectation that Bulgaria might seek to secure a
revision of this territorial settlement was the source of Greece's preoccupation and, also, as will be shown shortly, its motive for inserting in its
declaration under the optional clause a reservation of disputes relating to
its territorial status. In the present connection, however, what needs to be
emphasized is that the territorial settlement, against the revision of which
Greece's "territorial status" reservation was designed to provide a safeguard, consisted essentially of a complex of rights and obligations established by treaties. Consequently, having regard to the implications of the
Nationality Decrees Opinion, that territorial settlement was by its very
nature one which could not legally be considered as capable of falling
within the concept of questions of domesticjurisdiction. It follows that, by
integrating its territorial status reservation into its reservation of questions
of domesticjurisdiction, Greece would automatically have deprived itself
of the protection which the former reservation would othenvise have given
it against attempts to use the General Act as a means of effecting a revision
of the territorial settlement established by the peace treaties.
61. This basic objection to the Greek Government's way of interpreting
reservation (b) is not removed by another suggestion made in the public
hearings. This was that the series of treaties connected with the territorial
arrangements and the treatment of rninorities provided their own special
procedures for the settlement of disputes, which had priority over those of