"Nothing understood"

Politics is a tragedy for Austria’s economy

(Bild: krone.tv)

What is currently happening in politics is a tragedy for Austria as a business location. "Ultimately, I don't think any of the campaigning parties and leading politicians have understood what is at stake right now," says economic expert from the financial ombudsman team Gerald Zmuegg in the krone.tv talk

"The fact is, Austria is currently a restructuring case," says Gerald Zmuegg. Against this background, Austria should be treated like an insolvency case. But the "top personnel" are behaving in a way that does not do justice to this, explains Zmuegg using an analogy. "The first thing is, I can't say that the person who has been given the biggest budget, i.e. 30,000 euros, then simply says okay, you have these 30,000 euros now, but you can't use them. That makes it clear that the renovation will fail."

"Bans on thinking are the worst thing in this situation"
The second thing is that you can't ban people from thinking right from the start. "The reason why we are where we are is because the current system hasn't worked and we have to break new ground. Bans on thinking are pretty much the worst thing."

According to Zmuegg, politics needs to get into gear. "This probing now. I don't understand how you can have a blue Monday. I can do that if the state is working well." He is also not interested in what is going on in the SPÖ or the ÖVP. "I'm interested in what these people are now planning to do to get Austria's economy back on track and not get even worse," said Zmuegg emotionally.

(Bild: krone.tv)

Wave of bankruptcies in Austria
Austria is experiencing a wave of bankruptcies. "We have a recession". While experts from Creditreform expect over 7,000 company bankruptcies this year, Zmuegg expects 12,000. "The fact that the retail sector in particular has been affected by bankruptcies this year means that suppliers are already slowly coming under pressure. We just had a printing company go bankrupt yesterday because its main customers were in the textile retail sector," says Zmuegg.

Every bankruptcy means an economic loss, workers are lost. According to Zmuegg, the unemployment rate will be in double figures by the first quarter of 2025 at the latest.

 
Watch the whole talk with Gerald Zmuegg in the video above!