Mavrommatis Palestine Concessions

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Mavrommatis Palestine Concessions is the name of a decision of the Permanent International Court of Justice of August 30, 1924 .

facts

In 1914 the authorities of the Ottoman Empire signed a concession agreement with the Greek entrepreneur Mavrommatis for the construction of a tram and the expansion of the water and electricity supply in Jerusalem . The work was initially delayed because of the First World War . After its end, Palestine was placed under the administration of Great Britain . The British government refused to keep the contract with Mavrommatis and gave the concession to a British entrepreneur. Article nine of the XII. However, the additional protocol to the Treaty of Lausanne provided that concessions granted by the successor states (in this case Palestine and its mandate government) had to be observed. After Greece and the United Kingdom failed to reach an agreement through negotiation, Greece brought Mavrommatis to the Permanent Court of Justice to safeguard the rights of its national.

The decision

In its decision, the Court dealt solely with the question of whether it had jurisdiction over the dispute. First of all, the judges determined that Article 26 of the Mandate Treaty for Palestine could be considered as the legal basis for a decision by the StIGH . This provided that

"The elected mandate holder agrees that disputes between him and another member state of the League of Nations about the interpretation or application of the provisions of the mandate treaty, if the dispute cannot be settled through negotiations, be referred to the Permanent International Court of Justice."

The court therefore had to first examine whether the requirements of Article 26 of the League of Nations mandate were met. In the judgment it was stated that claims of the national Mavrommatis himself were in dispute. However, under international law there is an obligation of states to protect their nationals in the event that they have suffered damage through the actions of other states. Greece complied with this obligation by taking over the dispute and thus turning it into an international dispute between the two states.

The Court also considered that the additional requirement of Article 26, that negotiations between the parties must take place first, as fulfilled. As a representative of the British government , Cecil Hurst had submitted that - if the negotiations between Mavrommatis itself and the British government are disregarded - there was only a very limited exchange of diplomatic documents between the governments, so that negotiations could not be spoken of Do not judge this argument. They emphasized that the existence of negotiations is a matter of individual cases and cannot be tied to the scope of diplomatic writings. Even very brief discussions between governments could be regarded as negotiations within the meaning of Article 26 if, for example, these represented a continuation of discussions already held between the national and a party. The present case is exactly the same. The discussions that Mavrommatis had already had with the British government should be taken into account when assessing whether negotiations had been held and the question should therefore be answered in the affirmative.

Furthermore, the StIGH dealt with the question of the extent to which the dispute revolved around the interpretation or application of the provisions of the mandate contract. The Court also answered this question in the affirmative. The basis of the dispute is the refusal of the British government to recognize the concession agreement of 1914. This behavior must be measured against Article 11 of the mandate contract, which read:

“The government of Palestine takes all measures that are necessary to promote the development of society and the country and is authorized, in compliance with the international legal obligations entered into by the mandate holder, to ensure control over natural resources or other works and the construction of public facilities. There should be a development geared to the needs of the country ... "

This article covers the concession granted to Mavrommatis, since the article refers not only to activities of the Palestinian government itself, but also to activities that have been delegated to private individuals. The court reached this conclusion by interpreting the provision. Accordingly, all of the mandate holder's obligations under international law must be taken into account. These include the XII. Additional protocol to the Lausanne Treaty, as this was also signed by Great Britain. Accordingly, the dispute is about the interpretation and application of the contract.

As a result, the Court thus affirmed that it had jurisdiction over the present case.

source

  1. ↑ p. 12 of the judgment

See also

further reading