Dutch companies may be circumventing sanctions against Russia on a large scale. Turkey seems to have become one of the favorite shortcuts to get products banned for Russia into the country.
This can be deduced from figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). In the second quarter of 2023, 869 million euros worth of Dutch products on the EU sanctions list were exported to Turkey. This is 91 percent more than two years earlier.
A CBS spokesperson confirms that it ‘appears’ that this is the case Dutch companies thus circumvent the sanctions against Russia on a large scale. “But we can’t make it hard.”
Since the war in Ukraine, many goods are no longer allowed to be exported to Russia from EU countries. As a result, exports of Dutch products to Russia have fallen by 63 percent.
However, the sanctions against Russia appear to be being circumvented on a large scale through neighboring countries. For example, the export of Dutch products to Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan grew by 75 percent in the second quarter of 2023 compared to the same period in 2021.
The banned products include microchips, transport equipment, drones, expensive cars, yachts, jewelry and clothing. Office machines such as word processors, calculators and cash registers are also on the sanctions list. Russia was the second largest buyer of Dutch office machines in the second quarter of 2021. During this quarter, the Turkish share was 3.5 percent. Two years later, Turkey has become the second largest customer. The same goes for trucks and buses. Where exports to Russia stopped, exports to Turkey increased. (AP)
