Russia’s share of French foreign trade fell sharply in 2023, reaching its lowest level in more than decades, Customs said on Friday, July 12, attributing this decline to economic sanctions following the invasion of Ukraine.
Between 2021 and 2023, exports of goods to Russia were thus divided by three, amounting to 2 billion euros in 2023, “with in particular the cessation of deliveries of aeronautical products”, now prohibited by the European Union, explains the statistics department of the General Directorate of Customs and Indirect Taxes (DGDDI).
Russia will only account for 0.4% of French foreign trade in 2023, compared to 1.8% in 2021, reaching its lowest level since 2000. This decline has relegated Russia from 11th place among France’s most important trading partners in 2021 to 37th place in 2023. Indeed, imports of Russian origin (3.6 billion euros), mainly linked to energy, have followed the same downward trend and have thus been divided by more than three between 2021 and 2023. Crude oil, of which Russia was still France’s 6th supplier in 2021, and natural gas in gaseous state have almost disappeared from French imports, unlike liquefied natural gas (LNG) which continues to escape the embargo and remains the main product imported from Russia. To meet these energy requirements, France, like Europe, had to adjust by turning to the United States, the EU’s leading supplier of natural gas for the last three months of 2023 and the world’s leading exporter of LNG for the entire year.
Same trend on a European scale
At the European level, the decline is therefore just as evident: according to Customs, imports from Russia will only represent 0.8% of total imports into the European Union in 2023, down from 3% recorded in 2021.
By 2015, a year after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and an initial round of economic sanctions, Russia had already fallen two spots in France’s trading partner rankings, a far smaller impact than the invasion of Ukraine and the 26 positions it has lost since then. Nevertheless, the Russian economy has not succumbed to the collapse predicted by many Western leaders and analysts, as Moscow has skillfully reoriented itself toward Asia, notably by elevating China to the rank of its main trading partner.