Steinmeier (right) and Koenders pose for the photographers after signing a treaty on board the ship Neuwerk in the port of Emden, Germany. The border treaty in the Ems-Dollart-Region was signed on the boat in the middle of the Ems River.
DPA/Emden, Germany
Germany and the Netherlands have settled a border dispute that goes back centuries, agreeing to share an overlap in their offshore zones in the North Sea.
They agreed in a 1960 treaty to share an estuary and its offshore waters to three nautical miles (5.6km) offshore, but the next nine miles off the coast was left unregulated.
Yesterday’s agreement settled the dispute out to the 12-nautical-mile border.
A treaty signed aboard a boat by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Dutch counterpart, Bert Koenders regulates the economic uses of the sea bottom and was needed because power cables for offshore wind farms will soon run through the sea.
The original dispute dates back to 1558 when a German emperor declared Germany the owner of most of the estuary of the Ems River, something the Dutch never accepted.
