(MENAFN- Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) BRUSSELS, March 3 (KUNA) -- European Union's trade with Russia has been strongly affected following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with the EU imposing import and export restrictions on several products.
The effects of these measures have been particularly visible in the latest months, EU's statistical office, Eurostat, said in a statement Friday.
The value of EU exports to Russia fell by 55 percent between February 2022 and March 2022, while imports from Russia rose by 3 percent in these months due to a sharp increase of the price of energy products and raw materials.
Since then imports from Russia have declined steadily and in December 2022 they had fallen by 51 percent compared with February 2022.
These developments caused the EU's trade deficit with Russia to peak in March 2022 at 18.2 billion euro (USD 19.3 billion).
However, by December 2022 the deficit stood at 6.0 billion euro (USD 6.3 billion).
The share in value of Russia in EU imports declined strongly for coal, natural gas, petroleum oil, fertilizers and iron & steel, while for nickel the share remained almost unchanged.
EU imports of petroleum oil (combined crude and non-crude) from Russia in trade value more than doubled between January 2021 and February 2022 due to increasing prices.
Russia was the largest provider of petroleum oils to the EU in 2021.
After Russia's invasion, a major diversion in the trade of petroleum oil took place.
From July to December 2022 there was a drop of 114 percentage points (pp) in the value of EU imports from Russia, as both prices and volumes fell.
The share of Russian petroleum oil was equal to 15 percent in the fourth quarter of 2022, a decrease of 12 pp compared with the fourth quarter of 2021. The shares of Saudi Arabia (+4 pp) and the United States (+2 pp) both increased in this period.
EU imports of natural gas from Russia increased considerably between January 2021 and March 2022 as prices increased sharply.
In the light of several packages of sanctions imposed by the European Union, the supply of natural gas from Russia steadily decreased with a significant drop from April to June 2022.
The increase of EU gas imports between July to September 2022 due to the increase in prices was reversed in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Indexed at 100 in January 2021, the volume stood at 70 percent in March 2022 before falling to 39 percent in December 2022. (end)
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