Austria's Economic Policy in the Time of COVID-19 and Beyond

25.02.2021

Digital Club of Economic Journalists with WIFO Director Christoph Badelt

In a digital club of business journalists on 25 February 2021 WIFO Director Christoph Badelt talked about the Austrian federal government's main economic policy measures and discussed the issues and necessary reform steps to be taken in 2021.

The most urgent policy task for 2021 is to end the health crisis. "The longer the pandemic lasts, the longer relief measures have to be continued, the greater the economic crisis and the burden on public budgets", Badelt said.

In 2021, however, economic policy will not only be able to deal with repairing the damage caused by the COVID-19 crisis. "It will also have to address a number of fundamental problems of the Austrian economy were masked for months by the COVID-19 pandemic and whose solution was postponed to the future", Badelt added.

In his recent WIFO Report on Austria titled "Austria's Economic Policy in the Time of COVID-19 and Beyond" Badelt outlined the main challenges besides fighting pandemic.

Essentially it is about to become more involved in Europe and to solve the structural problems of Austria's foreign trade, to reduce the uncertainties created by the COVID-19 crisis and to integrate research and technology policy into a field of coherent measures to strengthen competitiveness, to counteract a number of other socio-political undesirable developments in the world of work besides long-term unemployment, to further develop the existing approaches in environmental policy into a comprehensive process of transformation, to stabilise public budgets again and in the process solve structural problems that jeopardise the sustainable development of the public sector. The ageing of society and digitalisation, two challenges that shape socio-economic change in society in many ways, run through several fields of action.

 

Publications

Austrian economic policy in 2020 was largely dominated by the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the implementation of the new government programme presented at the beginning of the year took a back seat, as did the solution of a number of structural problems facing the Austrian economy. This article summarises the main lines of economic development in 2020, focuses on the government's main economic policy measures and discusses the issues and necessary reform steps to be taken in 2021, such as climate policy or the long-term consolidation of public budgets. The references refer to in-depth WIFO research on the respective topics.
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Markus Kiesenhofer, BA, MA

Activities: Public relations, Coordinator Communication Division
© WIFO/Alexander Müller
© WIFO/Alexander Müller