Austria always tries to be one small step ahead, said Minister of Economics and Labor Martin Kocher (ÖVP) on the sidelines of a conference of the CDU Economic Council in Berlin. “It’s not about being the better Germany or seeing Austria as a small experimental laboratory for the great Germany.” It is the advantage of a small country to be more flexible and therefore always one step ahead.
The three biggest challenges at the moment are energy supply and prices, which are gradually becoming more and more competitive issues; the lack of labor and skilled labor for Europe in the next decade and managing the transformation to green and digitalisation.
labor migration
While these challenges are similar in Austria and Germany, Austria should always be at the forefront. With the red-white-red card, Austria is also one step ahead of Germany, where immigration law reform is only just being discussed, when it comes to immigration of workers.
Solving labor shortages
If you want to remedy the lack of labor, it is not enough to look only at the investment location. “You also have to look at how you are seen from the outside!” The shortage of skilled labor affects not only companies, but increasingly also the public sector. “Often the labor shortage in the public sector is even greater than in companies.”
Austria/Germany: Separation of electricity price zones as a damper
Relations between Austria and Germany are very close, but a disadvantage is the separation of the electricity price zones. From the Austrian point of view, it would be very useful if the uniform electricity price zone were to exist again.
Dangers at European level
At the European level, Kocher sees the danger that due to the division between different councils more and more ideas will no longer be compatible and therefore legislative projects will also no longer be compatible. Environmental care and nature conservation, agriculture, the labor market and other areas sometimes compete with each other. An example is on the one hand the European environmental protection regulations in production and on the other hand they want to keep production in Europe to be more independent from other production locations.
Kocher emphasized that Austria benefits enormously from the European single market, which was created thirty years ago. Austria records an average of 0.5 percent extra growth per year as a result of the domestic market. Since the year 2000, a third of growth has been due to internal market effects.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
