TEHRAN- The trade between Iran and European Union countries during the first half of 2019 stood at €2.56 billion, Tasnim news agency reported citing the latest report of European Union’s statistics agency Eurostat.

The figure shows 76 percent decrease from €10.67 billion in the first half of 2018.

According to the Eurostat, EU countries exported €2.14 billion of goods to Iran in the said time, decreasing almost to half from €4.57 billion in the same period in 2018.

EU members imported €420 million of Iranian goods from January to June of 2019, showing 93 percent increase from €6.1 billion in the first half of 2018.

While Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands were respectively the major exporters to Iran; Germany, Spain, France and Italy were the top importers from the country in the said time span, this year.

In May 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump formally pulled the United States out of the nuclear deal that was struck between Iran and world powers in July 2015.

Following Trump’s decision, in January 2019, France, Germany and Britain (known as the E3) introduced an Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) which was meant to facilitate legitimate trade between European economic operators and Iran in order to convince Iran to stay in the 2015 nuclear deal.

MA/MA