Eurostaete

  • Micronations
  • Founded 23 October 2010
  • Area 2997 m²
  • Founder Gerard Beukeveld

After a long lasting conflict about land ownership with the Dutch government, Gerard Beukeveld declared his property which is in the North of Holland on the border with Germany a sovereign free state. It was first named Beukeveld and later renamed to Eurostaete. Part of the property is a filled in ditch which forms a no man’s land, claimed by neither the Dutch nor the German government. Eurostaete has a flag, a currency and has plans to open a casino. It claims to have zero inhabitants, but 6 billion ‘outhabitants’ who all should respect the most important rule of it's constitution: ‘Everyone is and remains equal’.

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Western Sahara

The Sahrawi Republic is a partially recognized state that claims the non-self-governed territory of Western Sahara, but controls only the easternmost one-fifth of it. Morocco controls and administers the rest of the disputed territory and calls these lands its Southern Provinces. The Sahrawi Republic was proclaimed by the Polisario Front on 27th February, 1976, to fill what they considered a political void left by the departing Spanish colonizers. It maintains diplomatic relations with 40 UN states and is a full member of the African Union. While the claimed capital is the former Western Sahara capital El-Aaiún, the provisional capital was formally moved to Tifariti in 2008. Day-to-day business, however, is conducted in the Tindouf refugee camps in Algeria, which house most of the exiled Sahrawi community.

Mont Blanc

The Mont Blanc is the highest mountain of the Mont Blanc Massif and one of the highest peaks in Europe. The summit lies at the border between France and Italy. French cartographers claim three of the principal peaks (of which the Mont Blanc is one) within its territory, but this is disputed by the Italians who place the border right on the top of the mountain. This claim is backed up by locals from both sides who suggest the summit should be shared. The first recorded ascent was made on 8th August 1786, marking it the start of modern mountaineering.

Minerva

The Minerva reefs are two atolls in the Pacific Ocean and are located south of Fiji and Tonga. They lie below sea level and were discovered when the Rosalia shipwrecked there in 1807. Another shipwreck, the whaleship Minerva, gave its name to the reefs. In the early 1970s libertarian millionaire Michael J. Oliver erected the Ocean Life Research Foundation and reclaimed the reefs from the sea with tons of sand shipped in from Australia, he planned to build a resort there, Sea City, based upon libertarian principles: ‘no taxation, welfare, subsidies, or any form of economic interventionism’. He declared the independence of the Republic of Minerva in 1972, but this was not accepted by Tonga, the rightful owner of the reefs according to the South Pacific Forum. Ten years later another group of Americans made another attempt to claim the reefs but they were forced off by Tongan forces. Now the reefs are ‘more or less reclaimed by the sea’.