Current State and Major Trends of Russian-Italian Trade and Economic Cooperation

Abstract

In the face of the changing foreign policy strategy of the Russian Federation aimed at balancing the western and eastern vectors of cooperation, Italy is one of the key partners of Russia in Europe. Russian-Italian relations have a long history and are traditionally multifaceted. Nevertheless, sanctions against Russia had affected adversely the trade between two countries. Nowadays Russian-Italian trade cooperation signifi cantly lags behind the trade growth and volume levels between Russia and Germany. Besides, Russia’s exports to Italy consist largely of raw materials while it imports engineering products, chemical industry, food and consumer goods from Italy. Further expansion of Russian-Italian trade and economic cooperation is one of the priority areas for the development of bilateral relations. The most promising areas of the cooperation are creation of joint ventures in Russia, localization of manufacturing and expansion of non-energy exports to the third countries.