ATHENS (Reuters) -Greece revealed on Monday the boundaries of two planned marine parks in the Ionian and Aegean seas, with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis saying they will be the largest in the Mediterranean region.
Athens wants to establish the parks, for the protection of sea mammals and turtles in the Ionian Sea and for seabirds and seals in the Aegean, this year. Mitsotakis said they will help the country meet its global commitment to expand marine protected areas to 30% of its waters by 2030.
“They will allow us to meet the target … way ahead of schedule,” Mitsotakis said. “They will be vast sanctuaries for life beneath the waves,” he said, adding that trawling of the sea floor will be banned inside the zones.
The environmental studies on the parks’ boundaries were submitted on Monday for public consultation until September 22.
The planned Aegean Sea park has previously stirred tensions between Greece and neighbouring Turkey, with the two countries at odds over a range of issues including maritime boundaries.
Athens has said the park’s boundaries are within Greece’s territorial waters.
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said Greece was exploiting universal values such as environmental issues, that the parks would have no legal bearing on disputes between the neighbours in the Aegean and Mediterranean, and that Turkey will announce its own projects for marine life protection in coming days.
“Unilateral actions should be avoided in closed or semi-enclosed seas such as the Aegean and the Mediterranean,” it said in a statement, adding Ankara was ready to work with Athens as a fellow Aegean coastal state to address any outstanding disputes while the NATO allies try to maintain positive sentiment.
The Aegean park, at 9,500 square kilometres, will initially expand around the southern Cyclades islands, further south from Turkey, according to the maps Greece submitted on Monday, along with the environmental studies.
The size of both parks is seen at 27,500 km2, government officials said, and Greece wants to expand them further.
When the public consultation ends, the Environment Ministry will draft two presidential decrees, which will be submitted to the Council of State by the end of October, the officials added. The parks will be established once the decrees are published.
(Reporting by Renee Maltezou; Additional reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara; Editing by David Holmes and Dale Hudson)
