Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges


The Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges is a European special-purpose vehicle established in January 2019. Its mission is to facilitate non-USD and non-SWIFT transactions with Iran to avoid breaking U.S. sanctions.
Five EU nations declared in a joint statement on November 29 2019 will join the INSTEX mechanism for trade with Iran, these countries are Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Finland and Sweden.

HQ

The SPV is headquartered in Paris and is headed by Per Fischer, who formerly served as Head of Financial Institutions at Commerzbank, between 2003 and 2014.

Purpose

As of May 2019, the use of the SPV is limited to humanitarian purposes; such as the purchase of foods or medicines. INSTEX had been made available to all EU member states. On 11 February 2019, Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov stated that Russia would be interested in participating in INSTEX.

Operations

On June 28, 2019, the EU released a statement stating that INSTEX had been made operational. Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy stated that the purpose of INSTEX is to facilitate "legitimate trade" with Iran for any EU member and has been conceived to be open to non-EU countries.
In Iran, INSTEX is mirrored by the STFI, a similar SPV. STFI matches incoming and outgoing transactions in the same way. In effect, two Iranian entities pay each other, thus, no money crosses the Iranian border.
As of January 2020, the mechanism remained unused and "irrelevant to EU-Iranian trade".
On the 31st of March 2020, the first INSTEX transaction was concluded. It covered an import of medical equipment to combat the COVID-19 outbreak in Iran.