Martin Bartenstein: The economic relations between the EU and the US are often perceived to be dominated by trade disputes which, however, affect only about one per cent of transatlantic commerce of almost € 400 billion last year. To allow the EU-US relationship, the largest bilateral trade and investment relationship in the world, to further improve and to reach its full potential by abolishing remaining barriers to trade will dominate the economic agenda in 2006. Within the new “initiative to enhance transatlantic economic integration and growth,” issues such as regulatory cooperation, air transport, capital markets, innovation and technologies, intellectual property rights, investment flows, procurement and services will be tackled.
Martin Bartenstein: The key idea of “flexicurity” is to combine certain institutional features of flexible labor markets with a high level of security for the members of the labor force. “Securitiy” is here understood in a broad sense, including for example protecion against poverty and social marginalization, or elements of the pension system. The main components of “flexibility” are the flexibility of work contracts, wage flexibility and the flexibility in the organization of work and working time.
A key tenet of the Lisbon Strategy is that Europe must face the challenge of globalization in an offensive manner, stressing competitiveness and growth. A crucial condition for this is that the accelerating process of structural change can be effectively accommodated without giving up central features of the European social model. The flexicurity concept faces this challenge by taking fast structural change as a given and combining it with the provision of adequate levels of security.
Martin Bartenstein: In the short term the continuously high oil and gas prices dampen economic activities and fuel inflation. This is of course most unwelcome but does not pose a systemic risk for the Austrian economy as it did in the 1970s. In the longer term higher energy prices make energy conservation efforts and alternative sources of energy more competitive, which is not only good for the environment but offers new changes for Austria as a world leader in renewable energy.
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