PARIS — French energy companies operating in
Russia’s
Arctic Sea, Italian luxury boutiques near Red Square, German auto
factories around the Russian south. As the United States and European Union
apply sanctions to penalize Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, European
companies are bracing for the possibility that the punishment intended for
Moscow may hurt them, too.
اضافة اعلان
The sanctions, which include preventing the
government and banks from borrowing in global financial markets, blocking
technology imports and freezing assets of influential Russians, had been drawn
up to maximize pain to the
Russian economy while inflicting as little harm as
possible within the EU, the French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, said
Friday.
But thousands of foreign companies that have done
business in Russia for years are bracing for an inevitable economic blowback,
and war in
Ukraine threatens to disrupt supply chains and drag down Europe’s
economy just as it was starting to recover from the lashing of COVID lockdowns.
The
EU is Russia’s largest trading partner,
accounting for 37 percent of Russia’s global trade in 2020. Much of that is
energy: About 70 percent of Russian gas exports and half of its oil exports go
to Europe.
And while sales to Russia represent just around 5
percent of Europe’s total trade with the world, for decades it has been a key
destination for European companies in a range of industries, including finance,
agriculture and food, energy, automotive, aerospace and luxury goods.
Some European companies, especially in
Germany, have
had business ties to Russia for centuries. Deutsche Bank and Siemens, the
massive conglomerate that is the parent company of Siemens Energy, have been
doing business there since the late 19th century. During the Cold War, economic
ties were seen as a way to maintain relations across the Iron Curtain.
After the fall of the
Soviet Union, Western
companies came to Russia for different reasons, whether to sell Renaults or
Volkswagens to the country’s growing urban middle class, or to cater to a
growing cadre of wealthy elites seeking Italian and French luxuries. Other
wanted to sell German tractors to Russian farmers, or to acquire Russian
titanium for airplanes.
While some multinationals, such as
Deutsche Bank,
drew down their dealings in Russia after its annexation of Crimea in a 2014
military operation, others have worked assiduously to grow their market share
in recent years, and had been boldly angling to expand their Russian business —
even as President Vladimir Putin prepared to invade the neighboring country of
Ukraine.
More notable is
the omission of sanctions that would harm Russian energy imports to Europe, in
which a phalanx of influential energy companies from Paris to Berlin hold major
interests. Nor did allies shut Russia’s economy from the global payment system
known as
SWIFT, which is used by banks in 200 countries, drawing condemnation
from critics who said Europe’s leaders were putting economic interests above
the human toll on Ukraine.
That is a comfort for
European countries whose
companies have huge corporate presence in Russia.
For France alone, 35 of the 40 biggest French
companies listed on the country’s CAC 40 stock exchange have significant
Russian investments, from Auchan supermarkets on the streets of Moscow, to the
liquefied natural gas operations of the French energy giant
TotalEnergies in
the Yamal Peninsula, above the Arctic Circle. All but two of the 40 companies
listed on the DAX index in Frankfurt have investments in Russia.
Despite the efforts to minimize the pain to their
own countries,
European officials acknowledged the situation would probably get
worse before it improves.
“It will not be possible to prevent sectors of the
German economy from being affected,” the German economy minister, Robert
Habeck, said Thursday.
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