Citing the global economic crisis of 2008, the migration crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, Orbán told the forum on Hungarian-German economic relations that there were political reasons for why Hungary had emerged stronger from every crisis. He said the debate on the global economic crisis in Europe had been about whether the crisis had been a structural or a cyclical one. Most European countries saw it as a cyclical crisis, he said, adding that “I never accepted this interpretation.” The prime minister said he had considered the crisis to be structural in nature and one which had signalled that Europe would continually lose ground to Asia, including in terms of GDP, markets and technological competition unless it changed course. He said the answer to such a crisis was a deep structural reform, adding that his government had reformed the Hungarian economy accordingly after 2010. The Hungarian model is conservative when it comes to social policy and harkens back to the era of former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, he said.