French car equipment lobby group scraps Iran trip amid US threat
French Vehicle Equipment Industries Association (FIEV), the country’s top car industry lobby group, has canceled a planned trip to Iran in July, its president announced on Wednesday.
“The trip has been canceled and replaced instead by a meeting in France of our Iran club, so that we can reflect upon how to proceed in light of current events,” FIEV president Jacques Mauge said.
It came after Peugeot and Citroen maker PSA said on Monday it had begun “the process of suspending the activities of its JVs, in order to comply with US law by August 6, 2018” when US sanctions against Iran snap-back into place.
PSA and its French rival Renault were among the first European companies rushing to Iran to tap into a pent-up demand for new automobiles after sanctions were lifted on the country in 2016.
Both Renault and Peugeot withdrew from Iran in 2012 when the country came under intensified Western sanctions.
Their new retreat follows similar moves by French energy companies Total and Engie in response to Trump’s decision in May to withdrawal the US from an international nuclear deal with Iran and reimpose sanctions on the country.
The new sanctions will take six months to kick in, but a number of European companies have already halted their businesses in Iran despite verbal pledges by their governments to protect them against any fallout.
On Wednesday, European signatories to the nuclear deal were reported to have urged US officials to spare EU firms active in Iran from secondary sanctions.
In a letter dated June 4, European ministers from Germany, France and Britain wanted key areas such as pharmaceuticals, healthcare, energy, automotive, civil aviation, infrastructure and banking to be exempted.
US Under Secretary of the Treasury Sigal Mandelker, however, warned European governments and the private sector on Tuesday against trade with Iran.
"You must harden your financial networks, require your companies to do extra due diligence to keep them from being caught in Iran’s deceptive web, and make clear the very significant risks of doing business with companies and persons there," she said.
"Companies doing business in Iran face substantial risks, and those risks are even greater as we reimpose nuclear-related sanctions," she added. "We will hold those doing prohibited business in Iran to account."
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