Treaty of Lisbon

The treaty of Lisbon was an international agreement created by the old UN in June 2nd 2230, right after the discovery of the Conglomerate, in which world leaders gathered in the city of Lisbon, Portugal's Capital, to discuss how new interstellar territory should be managed and who should own it.

This agreement also led to the creation of the Terran Expeditionary Force.

It was because of this treaty that Starborn considers Lisbon sacred, for being the place where Humanity decided how it should conquer the stars.

## Location

Lisbon was chosen to host this meeting due to Portugal's neutrality regarding interests of world powers in controlling interstellar territory. Other locations were considered. Tokyo was briefly suggested but quickly dismissed, as it was clear Japan was a leading industrial power. Any territory of the USA, Russia, China and other influential powers like Brazil, India or the UK were dismissed. For a reasonable ammount of time, it was even suggested that the meeting should take place in a location with hostile relations with major powers, somewhere in the Third World. However, this idea was also excluded, mainly because of security problems. It was also due to security that it was decided this meeting should take place on Earth, instead of in an orbital station, like the abandoned ISS.

In the end, Portugal's capital was chosen for having friendly or at least stable relations with all the powers. Being more ideologically inclined to the Western World, Portugal's past as a colonial empire and contact with the Eastern World made modern relations much more stable than they could have been. And so, Lisbon was chosen as the closest to a neutral location on Earth.

## Agreement

The treaty successfully managed to determine how new territory should be managed and who would own and rule it.

The first thing decided was that no country or nation of Earth could claim Wild Space, neither as a colony or as an extention of national territory.

It was also decided that it was the right of the first colonizers of a new territory in space to govern their space. In case of a sector, whoever owned the most influential power, wether it was a federal body (such as TEF) or a private faction (such as Lambda Corp).

It was agreed that it would be fair to grant control to who could successfully establish an effective government. Whoever could build an economy, execute justice and law, build and thrive in this new space territories should be allowed to rule. Once again, wheter or not the governing body was private or not.

Regarding planetary colonies, **any and all attempt of colonization were to be authorized by Earth. Any** attempt of colonizing a planet without the proper authorization of Earth would result in a military response on Earth's part and immediate takeover of said planet, applying big sanctions of several million credits in whoever was responsible.

Regarding planets, it was decided that the initial colonization was to be equal to a space sector. The first colonizers were to execute justice and law until the colonization process was complete, which took only a few weeks, most of the times. When the initial colonization was finished, if the first colonizers belonged to a private body, such private body would have economic power over the planet. However, justice was to be administred by the colonizers personally, with no relation to the private body that began colonization. Basically, colonizers were to create a planetary state, economically submissive to the private body, but politically independent. If the colonizers succeeded to turn their planetary state self sustainable, it was allowed to claim complete independence, effectively creating a new nation. This would only be possible by reporting to Earth (to the UN) who would inspect said planet and determine whether or not it was ready to cut economic submission to the private body that colonized it. It is important to refer that this only applies to telluric planets. Gas giants cannot be effectively colonized, and the orbital stations around it are assets to whatever private body builds it. The planet effectively remains neutral and uncolonized, but it officially belongs to whoever owns the most orbital stations or the largest ones.

If two or more private bodies agree on a mutual colonization, the rules are the same: colonizers rule the planet, but are economically submissive to the private bodies, and can still claim complete independence.

In case a federal body decided to colonize a planet, it could simply claim it, with the proper authorization of Earth. The federal body could then effectively build a proper economy and political system on the planet, keeping its assets in space. Until the economy was secured, only the federal body could build the economy of the planet, and after that private bodies could rise in the planet. If the federal body attempted to keep absolute control, such woud also result in military intervention from Earth, with the previously said sanctions also being applied. If a private body attempted to rise before the economy was secured on a planet, the federal body was to report to Earth, which would then determine the sanctions that could be applied on the private body. To make sure this scenario was nearly impossible, federal bodies in process of colonization were advised to isolate themselves from the capitalist system, banning the use of currency and rationing the colonizer's properties just until it could support itself and generate income. It is important to refer that, due to the limitations of colonization of gas giants, this only applies to telluric planets as well. Being nearly impossible for a federal body to run orbital stations only and establish an effective rule on the planet, it was suggested that federal bodies only attemped to colonize telluric planets. TEF, for example, did not rule Gato. The orbital stations belonged to private corporations, until SOM took over.

## Result

Despite being considered an effective agreement to properly colonize new space territory, the Treaty ultimately failed its goal. There were numerous infractions of the clauses and, of all the planets, only 2 were taken by federal bodies: Krono and Pampgar by the United Sectors Confederation. The rest were colonized by private bodies. The Enclave violated virtually every clause during their takeover of the Conglomerate and the Wildlands.