The dispute, which was submitted to the Court on 20 February 1967, related to the delimitation of the continental shelf between the Federal Republic of Germany and Denmark on the one hand, and between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Netherlands on the other. The Parties asked the Court to state the principles and rules of international law applicable, and undertook thereafter to carry out the delimitations on that basis.
The Court rejected the contention of Denmark and the Netherlands to the effect that the delimitations in question had to be carried out in accordance with the principle of equidistance as defined in Article 6 of the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf, holding:
- that the Federal Republic, which had not ratified the Convention, was not legally bound by the provisions of Article 6;
- that the equidistance principle was not a necessary consequence of the general concept of continental shelf rights, and was not a rule of customary international law.
The first question to be considered was whether the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf was binding for all the Parties in the case. Under the formal provisions of the Convention, it was in force for any individual State that had signed it within the time-limit provided, only if that State had also subsequently ratified it. Denmark and the Netherlands had both signed and ratified the Convention and were parties to it, but the Federal Republic, although one of the signatories of the Convention, had never ratified it, and was consequently not a party.
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