2024-01-17 21:01:06
Edition from Thursday, January 18, 2024
Innsbruck (OTS) – It is a top position that one can be anything but proud of: Austria has inflation that is almost twice as high as the average of the Eurozone countries. And recently the gap has even increased.
Former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz loved superlatives in his political marketing, even if the actual reality didn’t always keep pace with the appearance. His successor, Karl Nehammer, is undoubtedly more modest in this regard.
After Corona, the turquoise-green coalition saw a wave of inflation with the war in Ukraine. How the pandemic was managed compared to other countries can be debated. When it comes to inflation, however, there can probably be no two truths; the numbers speak for themselves. Austria, which used to have such stable prices and pegged the schilling to the hard German mark and wanted to show its muscles in Brussels on financial issues as one of the hardliners of the “Frugal Four”, has a very weak record in the fight once morest inflation. We have been one of the price leaders for a long time; most recently, the inflation rate according to EU criteria was 5.7 percent, practically twice as high as the average for the euro countries (2.9 percent). Not only the former inflation emperors in southern Europe have much lower inflation rates, but also all of our neighbors with the exception of Slovakia. Switzerland and Italy are even below two and one percent, respectively.
Long supply contracts for energy or the high importance of tourism are repeatedly cited as contributing to the price surge. However, justifications like these, especially since this is not just the case in Austria, are no justification for the far too high inflation in this country – which massively affects every individual, but especially those who are socially disadvantaged. And it is extremely dangerous that the competitiveness of the Austrian economy will continue to decline as a result of the cost increases.
Following the Corona pattern, Austria tried to cushion the consequences with financial injections. But prosperity on credit will not work in the long term. In contrast to other countries that are much more successful in this regard, people shied away from greater government intervention in the cost drivers of energy, housing and food. One thing is clear: the previous certificate states a flat “not sufficient”.
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