Italy, Greece, and Tunisia have quietly formed a united front at the United Nations over competing claims to Mediterrane...

Italy, Greece, and Tunisia have quietly formed a united front at the United Nations over competing claims to Mediterranean seabed resources, with Libya and Turkey pushing hard in the opposite direction. On September 24, Italy submitted updated baseline coordinates to the UN, replacing a submission that dated to 1996. The move follows Italian Law No. 70, passed in May 2026, and brings Rome's technical reference points in line with its current coastline. The document was registered under UN reference M.Z.N. 177.2026.LOS. The stakes go well beyond lines on a map. Whoever controls an exclusive economic zone, which can extend up to 200 nautical miles from a country's baseline, controls the rights to fish, oil, and natural gas beneath those waters. The Mediterranean's coastlines are close enough that overlapping claims are almost unavoidable without formal delimitation agreements. Libya threw the first punch in this dispute. On May 27, 2025, Tripoli submitted a declaration to the UN laying out the outer limits of its continental shelf. Greece immediately contested the claims, arguing that portions of Libya's declared zone fall within areas Athens considers part of its own continental shelf south of Crete. Italy followed on May 24, 2026, sending a formal protest note to Libya, arguing that Tripoli's boundary claims in the area between the 13°50' and 15°10' East meridians violate rights upheld by the International Court of Justice in a 1985 ruling on the Libya-Malta dispute. Behind Libya's expansionist position sits Turkey. Ankara signed a controversial maritime memorandum with Tripoli in 2019 that Greece and much of the EU rejected outright, and Erdogan's government has since backed Libyan claims as part of a broader strategy to limit Greek influence in the Eastern Mediterranean. The seabed is not just about energy. Submarine cables carrying roughly 99 percent of global internet traffic run along these disputed stretches of seafloor, and the EU launched a dedicated Cable Security Toolbox in 2026 to address the vulnerability. The GreenStream pipeline, a 516-kilometer link between Libya and Sicily operated jointly by Eni and Libya's national oil company, already ...