Dutch products ending up in Russia via Turkey

Dutch companies seem to be circumventing the European sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine by exporting products to the country via Turkey. The export of Dutch products to Russia has decreased since the sanctions. At the same time, Dutch exports to Turkey increased explosively. In the second quarter of this year, 869 million euros of Dutch sanctioned goods went to Turkey – 91 percent more than two years earlier, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reported.

Due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU banned the export of goods like microchips, transport equipment, machines, and drones from EU countries to Russia.

Dutch-made exports to Russia amounted to 285 million euros in the second quarter of 2023, 63 percent lower than two years earlier, before the invasion. At the same time, exports of Dutch products to Turkey and the Eurasian Economic Union Countries (EEU+) – Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan – grew by 42 and 75 percent respectively.

In Q2 of 2021, Russia was the second largest buyer of Dutch office machines like word processors, calculators, and cash registers, accounting for 10 percent of exports valued at 19.3 million euros. The sanctions cover these machines. Two years later, no more Dutch office machines were exported to Russia. In that same period, Turkey’s share of Dutch office machine exports grew from 3.5 percent to 10 percent, with an export value of 15 million euros.

Trucks and buses are also on the sanctions list. In the second quarter of 2021, Russia had a 1.8 percent share in the export of Dutch trucks and buses, valued at around 11 million euros. Here, too, exports to Russia stopped, but exports to Turkey increased from 0.5 percent in Q2 of 2021 to 3 percent in this year’s second quarter.

“Trucks and buses were also exported more to the EEU+ countries. The export value in the second quarter of 2023 was over 35 times higher than two years earlier,” CBS said. The export values of Dutch trucks and buses to Turkey and EEU+ countries amounted to 7 million and 23 million euros, respectively, in the second quarter of this year.