British Overseas Territories - Foreign Affairs

Foreign Affairs

See also: Special member state territories and the European Union

Foreign affairs of the overseas territories are handled by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. Some territories maintain diplomatic officers in nearby countries for trade and immigration purposes. Several of the territories in the Americas maintain membership within the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, the Caribbean Community, the Caribbean Development Bank, Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, and the Association of Caribbean States. The territories are members of the Commonwealth of Nations through the United Kingdom. The inhabited territories compete in their own right at the Commonwealth Games, and three of the territories (Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands) sent teams to the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Gibraltar is the only overseas territory that is part of the European Union (EU), although it is not part of the customs union and is not a member in its own right. None of the other Overseas Territories are members of the EU, and the main body of EU law does not apply and, although certain slices of EU law are applied to those territories as part of the EU's Association of Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT Association), they are not commonly enforceable in local courts. The OCT Association also provides overseas territories with structural funding for regeneration projects.

Since the return of full British citizenship to most 'belongers' of overseas territories (mainly since the British Overseas Territories Act 2002), the citizens of those territories hold concurrent European Union citizenship, giving them rights of free movement across all EU member states.

Several nations dispute the UK's sovereignty in the following overseas territories:

  • British Antarctic Territory — Territory overlaps Antarctic claims made by Chile and Argentina
  • British Indian Ocean Territory — claimed by Mauritius and Seychelles
  • Falkland Islands — claimed by Argentina
  • Gibraltar — claimed by Spain
  • South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands — claimed by Argentina

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