On March 15, the Austrian parliament enacted the COVID-19 Act which, among the other things, establishes the COVID 19 Fund, drawing resources from the Federal government.
The COVID-19 Fund Act established the “COVID-19 Crisis Management Fund” at the Federal Minister of Finance (BMF). This fund will distribute money to federal ministries in order to efficiently and flexibly finance measures to deal with the COVID-19 crisis in Austria. The fund is endowed with up to EUR 4 billion. Some examples of potential fund purposes include:
- stimulating the labor market (especially short-time work under Section 13 (1) of the Labor Market Financing Act);
- cushioning crisis-related loss of income;
- stimulating the economy.
So far, the fund has been used primarily for short-time work and tax relief for affected businesses. The BMF is responsible for administering the fund based on government guidelines, which are not yet publicly available.
You can find the published article under this link
