World Champion Austria Investments
EY Attractiveness Survey Austria 2021 A record in foreign direct investments in Austria – against the European trend.
Success for Austria’s business location policy Gunther Reimoser, Country Managing Partner at EY Austria, considers the overall slight decrease of investments into Europe a sign of great trust in the competitiveness of the various national economies: “The Covid pandemic sent Europe into freeze mode in spring 2020. It led to massive austerity measures and halted numerous investment projects. But in the second half of the year the economy went back into gear in many places and the situation
improved significantly for investments. In the end, the decrease in investments was considerably less than initially feared.” Reimoser believes that the high increase in foreign investments in Austria was the driving force for a further economic upswing: “We consider this increase against the European trend an acknowledgment of the Austrian business location policy – the attractiveness of Austria has gone up considerably during the last
© EY/Stefan Seelig
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investment projects from foreign investors were announced throughout Europe in 2020, which was 13 percent less than the previous year. The last time we experienced such a drop in investments was 2009. But due to lockdown and severe restrictions that affected private and business life, some analysts had expected an even bigger decrease in investments. Several medium-sized national economies such as Poland, Turkey, Austria and Switzerland, however, could actually attract more investments from foreign businesses than in 2019. The number of foreign direct investments in Austria rose a further ten percent in 2020 – against the European trend. 76 new projects meant a new record; in 2019 there were 69 projects. The main driver of this increase was investments from Germany, where there was an increase of 34 new projects, which was an increase of 42 percent. German companies are responsible for almost every other foreign investment in Austria of late. The number of investments from the United States and China, however, went down significantly compared to the previous year. These findings come from the 19th EY Attractiveness Survey of business consulting agency EY, which looks every year at the attractiveness of Europe as a business location and actual investment projects from foreign businesses.
Gunther Reimoser, Country Managing Partner at EY Austria
