Joseph Pisenti of RealLifeLore explains why a piece of land along the Danube River that sits between Croatia and Serbia remains unclaimed by either country. It turns out, it all comes down to a border dispute. Serbia claims their border ends at the Danube and the land is not theirs, while Croatia refuses to claim the land as they don’t accept Serbia’s claim regarding the river border.
From Serbia’s standpoint the border is the Danube river as it is today and the unclaimed piece of land to the west of the river therefore is rightfully a part of Croatia. But Croatia doesn’t claim it because if they ever did it would mean that they recognize the Danube river as it exists today as the border between them just like Serbia and it would mean forfeiting all of their much more valuable claims to the more plentiful land over to the east of the river.
To make matters more complicated, many people have tried to make a claim on this property, including a Czech politician who invoked the terra nullius doctrine in his effort to establish a new country called The Free Republic of Liberland. Unfortunately, neither Serbia nor Croatia will allow a new nation to emerge from a piece of land so close to their respective borders.
Serbia has stated before that while they find the whole matter trivial the hypothetical new state of Liberland does not infringe upon the Serbian border which they say is delineated by the Danube meanwhile Croatia has stated that after international arbitration, the land should be given to either Serbia or Croatia and not to any third party while they don’t outright claim the land for themselves.
In other words, we don’t want it but no one else can have it. And there seems to be no resolution in sight as neither country wants to claim the land but they don’t want to recognize the sovereignty of Liberland. But the matter will always remain fluid, as with any other border disputes
As it stands now there still aren’t any countries who recognize the sovereignty of Liberland but who knows how that could change in the future.
