Financial Tribune

Deputy German Ambassador to Iran Oliver Schnakenberg; CEO of German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (AHK) Dagmar von Bohnstein; President of Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture Masoud Khansari; and President of AHK in Iran Abbasali Ghassaie were among participants of this event.

The meeting was organized with the aim of surveying the present condition of bilateral trade and bottlenecks facing businesspeople from the two countries. 

The two sides explored ways of overcoming these barriers and put forward solutions to ease economic interactions, especially under the current sanctions regime imposed by the United States against Iran.

Schnakenberg said INSTEX (The Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges) is a temporary project that tries to restore bilateral trade figures to what they were before economic sanctions were imposed on Iran.

“INSTEX is part of our measures to try and salvage the JCPOA,” he was quoted as saying by ILNA, referring to the nuclear deal Iran signed with world powers in 2015 (formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). 

The special-purpose vehicle was launched in January as part of a broader effort by Germany, France and Britain—the so-called E3—to preserve the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran after the US abandoned the deal last year. 

The new body is supposed to help companies in Iran and Europe maintain trade flows in defiance of the US threat of sanctions, by offering a payments channel that is not subject to US penalties. 

However, INSTEX has been beset by delays and bureaucratic hurdles, most of which are linked to complications caused by the US sanctions. 

Latest data provided by the European Statistical Office show that with €933.66 million worth of bilateral exchanges, Germany was Iran's biggest trading partner in the EU during the first seven months of 2019. 

Germany's exports to Iran accounted for €815.31 million of the total trade figure.