"Krone" commentary

And the budget deficit is always rocking

The head of the economic research institute is outraged: "The budget is 50 billion short", savings in the public sector are unavoidable. And elsewhere, he goes one better: Austria threatens to have the worst budget deficit in Europe, with a deficit "even worse than Greece". Rumms, that sums it up.

The Finance Minister, in turn, called for a "breathing space" for the budget and made a strong appeal not to abandon the stability course in Austria. "But now there is a threat of expensive election promises that will destroy the stability course." Oh yes, of course, always those darned elections.

But the head of the IHS also hits the economic policy scene like lightning: "The election sweeteners distributed during the election campaign are completely unfinanceable, they are not forward-looking policies." And he puts it in a nutshell: "If the current promises of all parties were implemented, we would be worse off than the Italians."

The ÖVP states: "In order to secure Austria as a business location, the equity base of companies must be strengthened."

Do these sentences sound familiar? No wonder, because they date back to 1998 and 1999 - long live the archives - a different year, but the same problems and promises as today. Everything is unsolved, only the debts are many times higher than feared...