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

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.