The chairwoman of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) (Germany, France, United Kingdom and China, Russia and Iran) and Secretary General of the European External Action Service (EEAS), Helga Schmid, announced on Friday 28 June that the special purpose vehicle INSTEX was operational.
"France, Germany and the United Kingdom informed participants that INSTEX had been made operational and available to all EU Member States and that the first transactions are being processed", the Presidency communiqué explained, issued after a meeting in Vienna. INSTEX's objective is to allow trade with Iran to continue, despite US sanctions.
According to Mrs Schmid, the ongoing complementary cooperation with STFI, the Iranian twin entity created "will speed up".
The creation of INSTEX was announced last September (see EUROPE 12103/14), but the implementation was long, as Iran needed to create this entity and commit itself to comply with the rules of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
Germany, France and the United Kingdom (E3) also confirmed that some EU Member States were in the process of joining INSTEX as shareholders and are working to open up this mechanism to economic operators from third countries.
For example, in a joint statement dated 28 June, seven Member States - Austria, Belgium, Spain, Finland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Sweden - revealed that they were working with the E3, as well as with the EEAS and the Commission, "to establish channels to facilitate legitimate trade and financial transactions with Iran", "one of these major initiatives being the creation of the Instrument for Supporting Trade Exchanges (INSTEX)". They stated that they were aware of "the difficulties in implementing the economic part of the agreement" due to the American sanctions.
In that "for INSTEX to be useful to Iran, Europeans must buy Iranian oil, or consider a budget line", warned Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi after the meeting, adding that in the meantime, his country would continue its gradual disengagement from the agreement. In January, the German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, explained that INSTEX would cover "areas not sanctioned by the United States" and, therefore, not oil (see EUROPE 12184/1).
At the end of the meeting, the Director General of the Arms Control Department of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Fu Cong, announced that his country would continue to import Iranian oil despite the risks of US extraterritorial sanctions, refusing to allow Washington to unilaterally impose sanctions.
According to the Presidency declaration, participants will continue to intensify their efforts to lift sanctions "by organising specialised and targeted discussions with experts (...) with the goal of finding practical solutions to maintain the normalisation of trade and economic relations with Iran".
In addition, the E3+2 and Iran noted "satisfactory" progress on the modernization of the Arak reactor - including the signing of the contract between China and Iran on the transient analysis - and on the Fordow facility.
A joint commission at Ministerial level is expected to be convened in the near future, according to the declaration. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)