STATE CLAIMS IN VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 4 (LOSC ARTICLE 7), Italy case

Except for one small area at the northeastern tip of Sardinia where the
coastline appears to be somewhat irregular, the Italian coast is
remarkably smooth. Indentations that do exist are relatively shallow
and even the Gulf of Taranto, which could perhaps be termed deep in
and of itself (see insert, Fig. 5.15), does not combine with other deep
indentations in the same locality to give the coast a cut into
appearance. Nevertheless, almost all indentations along the coast of Italy have been enclosed with straight baselines. This is inconsistent not only with the deeply-indented requirement of Article 4(1) (LOSC
Article 7 (1)) but also with the juridical bay rules of Article 7 (LOSC
Article 10).
The only indentations not illegitimately enclosed in this way are
those between Livorno on the Ligurian Sea and a point south of
Naples on the Tyrrhenian Sea where shallow coastal indentations have
been subsumed within even larger water areas defined by basepoints
located on islands nowhere near the immediate vicinity of the coast
(see Fig. 5.15). The islands in each group are spatially isolated from
each other rather than composing a fringe. Even if the mainland coast
were deeply indented in these localities, which it is not, the resulting
baselines depart so widely from the general direction of the coast in
several instances that they appear to be veering in an almost opposite
direction. There is no similarity between waters so enclosed and
“waters so closely linked to the land domain as to be subject to the
regime of internal waters.”