"Not efficient"

We are still paying off these crisis subsidies

The government's aid measures were often not targeted and relied on a rain of money.

(Bild: Krone KREATIV/stock.adobe.com, Martin A. Jöchl )

The pandemic and the inflation crisis have swallowed up billions in subsidies and aid money. But we are still paying for these crises now. By the end of 2024, these costs will have added up to around 78 billion euros. The climate bonus is also putting a significant strain on the budget, despite supposedly being financed by a CO2 tax.

"The government opened the money floodgates in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and kept them open in the following years due to inflation and the war in Ukraine," analyzes Hanno Lorenz, economist at the liberal business think tank Agenda Austria. This means that the current government is also passing on a large backpack of debt to the next one. According to the Fiscal Council, the costs of the crisis will amount to a further nine billion euros by 2027.