European Investors Remain Loyal To Russian Market Despite Sanctions - Association

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 17th February, 2021) European businesses remain loyal to the Russian market despite the sanctions regime as there are still many areas where the cooperation may grow, such as healthcare, consumer goods and the energy sector, Tadzio Schilling, the CEO of Association of European Businesses (AEB) told Sputnik.

"European investors are very loyal to Russia, they have been loyal to Russia throughout three crises already, in 1999, 2008 and 2015. If you look at EY European attractiveness survey for the year of 2015-2016, which were the last crisis years, the number of investment projects actually has increased during these years. We think that in 2020, the investors continued to invest in Russia, they continued to successfully complete ongoing projects, but also to replenish the pipeline with new projects," Schilling said.

European businesses in Russia say that in general they are doing well and are satisfied with the market, thus AEB is positive about the outlook, the executive noted.

"We expect 2021 to be no different and we hope that the new initiatives by the government in the field of investment climate such as the Law on protection and attraction of foreign investment and the measures in support of exports and integration of global value chain will develop positive effect in that regards," the AEB CEO said.

The public should not focus solely on the regime of sanctions, as there are many areas where both the EU and Russia can expand their cooperation, according to the association.

"Speaking about sanctions is a bit like the rabbit that is focusing on a snake. In fact, there is an extremely large part of the economy that is not affected by the sanctions at all. You can work freely in such sectors as consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, transport, even in the non-offshore oil & gas or in renewables, there are a lot of things that can be done," Schilling said.

Against the background of the pandemic, EU-Russian healthcare cooperation is increasing, as evidenced by last year's healthcare conference, organized by the EU delegation to Russia.

"Where do I see that the EU and Russia can increase the business cooperation? First, in the sphere of healthcare, the pandemic has clearly demonstrated the need for cooperation in managing global health hazards. And both EU and Russia aim to maintain a favorable environment for the emergence of new drugs and to expand the market for them in order to encourage pharmaceutical companies to invest in research and development. And some of the European investors already have invested in Russia, not only in production but also in research and development," Schilling noted.

As for the energy sector, the EU and Russia may cooperate more on low carbon energy transformation, renewables and hydrogen, according to AEB.