An enclave is a territory of a country that is completely surrounded by the territory of another country. It is therefore a geographically separate territory, which raises a number of interesting international legal and political issues that are often at the heart of disputes in bilateral relations between two neighbouring countries and, consequently, the subject of litigation in international courts.
The territories of enclaves have always posed a number of challenges for the possessing State, and neighbouring States have exchanged a number of enclaves throughout history, which have thus disappeared, in Europe particularly in the 19th century, at a time of consolidation of national territories. This trend continued slowly in the 20th century, but today it seems to have largely died out, as enclaves sometimes represent an important strategic advantage for the home country, or there is no democratic will in the enclave or the neighbouring country to exchange them.
There are many definitions of enclaves and related concepts, so in this thesis I have tried to focus on the most widely used and established ones. After trying to define the term precisely, I link the term to the concept of exclave and clarify the (in)justification of the interchangeability of the terms. This is followed by a presentation of the different types of enclaves and their subgroups, as well as enclave-like terms. After giving the historical background and reasons for the creation of enclaves, I briefly introduce the former most important enclave in the world, West Berlin. Using West Berlin and the other examples I present below (Kaliningrad, Baarle, Campione, etc.), I try to understand from the examples the specificity of enclave life and the challenges faced by the local population. I also briefly touch upon the case of (former) enclaves in Slovenia.
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