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At home in Vienna, he has just lost his green health minister due to overwork.
With his black-green or turquoise-green coalition, Austria's Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, at 34 the world's youngest head of government, is fighting on various fronts.
Of course, the pandemic stands out from all the crises and problems in Austria.
In the fight against Corona, the government sees itself on the home stretch, as Kurz emphasized at the beginning of his keynote speech at the conference.
Despite a higher incidence than in Germany, Austria plans to reopen completely in May.
"The pandemic is also an opportunity not to do everything afterwards as before," Kurz introduced the topic of sustainability.
On the one hand, it is about the massive investment in digitization, "not only in Austria, but in the entire European internal market".
Global equality of opportunity is essential
Another goal is the ecological transformation of the local economy: Austria wants to become CO₂-neutral by 2040.
The focus is on three areas.
1. Renewable energies, which already make up 70 percent in Austria: By 2030, they want to get to 100 percent.
2. In agriculture and food in particular, there must be a “return to regional consumption”.
3. Energy efficiency: Here the focus should be on the entire area of mobility and building renovation.
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A question that worries the Chancellor in particular: How can the ecological transformation succeed without destroying jobs in Europe?
The decisive point is equal competitive conditions on the world market.
Europe should be more self-confident and demand stubborn sustainability standards from international trading partners like China.
"Everything else leads to massive distortion of competition."
The lecture was shaped by the cooperation between business and environmental protection, in keeping with the current coalition.
Kurz did not want to say whether such a connection would also be a good solution for the German neighbors: "We have succeeded in combining the best of both worlds."