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INTRODUCTION . In modern international and domestic maritime law, regional fragmentation of legal regulation is becoming more and more noticeable, which, in turn, objectifies and actualizes the formation of complex arrays of legal norms, united by the consistency of the political and legal positions of the contracting states that have national interests in the relevant water area, primarily-coastal states extending their state sovereignty to certain areas of maritime space. In this context, the Greater Mediterranean region should be considered as one of the most important in the world merchant shipping and naval support of international peace and security, as a basin that optimally connects the Atlantic and Indian Oceans from the point of view of logistics, which requires the formation of an appropriate scientific and methodological basis for full implementation of the fundamental principle of international cooperation in the maritime policy of the states of the region. MATERIALS AND METHODS . To substantiate the expediency of singling out the Greater Mediterranean as an independent object of legal regulation, general and special international legal treaties, the domestic legislation of the Mediterranean states, as well as political and legal documents indicating the existence of certain disputes and situations around certain zones of the Mediterranean water area, primarily – in the Eastern Mediterranean region. To obtain reliable and substantiated results of the study, methods of scientific knowledge were used: formal-legal, logical, historical-legal, system-structural analysis. Thus, the formal legal method made it possible to clarify the content and meaning of international legal treaties concluded at different times and aimed at regulating public relations in the maritime sphere. The logical method made it possible to substantiate the need for comprehensive international cooperation of the coastal states of the Greater Mediterranean. With the help of the historical and legal method, an overview was made of both the world, Soviet and Russian practice of applying the norms of domestic and international law on issues related to ensuring international law and order in the Greater Mediterranean region. The logical method made it possible to build the necessary connections and patterns of development of international legal regulation in the Greater Mediterranean region in the general context of ongoing universal and regional political and legal processes and transformations. Using the method of system-structural analysis, it was possible to display a holistic picture of law-making and law enforcement of the Mediterranean states, aimed at the formation of unified principles and norms for the exercise of the sovereign rights of coastal states. RESEARCH RESULTS . International maritime merchant shipping seems to be a very complex area of public relations with a large number of entities that have different legal status and, accordingly, are related to each other in a very different way. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS . This work is devoted to the study of the main trends in the development of the Greater Mediterranean region in terms of formulating key international legal guidelines and rules of conduct for its constituent states. The object of the study is the legal relations carried out in the maritime spaces of the Greater Mediterranean as one of the key regions, which, along with its economic and political significance, is an integral zone for the implementation of the national interests of the Russian Federation, extending to the entire World Ocean.
Koval et al. (Wed,) studied this question.