Could Central and Eastern Europe Present Itself as One Economy?

Central and Eastern Europe already has the scale of a major global economy. It simply does not present itself as one. Eleven EU economies between the Baltic, Adriatic and Black Seas mean almost 100 million people and roughly $2.5 trillion in GDP. By 2030, the region should present itself to the world as a $3-trillion-plus economic space built on manufacturing, technology, logistics, energy and defense. And Ukraine could turn CEE from Europe’s former periphery into one of its principal geoeconomic centers. The region does not need another institution or treaty. It needs aggregation, ambition and a common narrative. The method, not the numbers In 2025, ASEAN did something CEE should study. It adopted an Economic Community Strategic Plan for 2026-30 – six goals, 44 objectives, 192 measures – as part of a longer ambition to become the world’s fourth-largest economy by 2045.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. The date matters less than the method. ASEAN does not sell its future through Indonesia, Vietnam or Thailand. It adds up its national economies and asks the world to look at Southeast Asia as a single economic proposition. CEE should do the same – not by building a second EU inside the EU, or surrendering national interests to another layer of bureaucracy, but simply by learning to think beyond national borders, communicate its combined weight, and, when it makes sense, act as one economic space. The numbers already justify it Take a deliberately conservative EU-CEE: Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Together, roughly $2.5 trillion in nominal GDP in 2024, with a population close to 100 million. Poland alone produced around $860 billion – on course to cross the trillion-dollar mark in 2025-26 – followed by Romania at almost $390 billion and Czechia at roughly $383 billion. Other Topics of Interest Zelensky Urges China, India to Pressure Russia as Weekly Strikes Top 2,200 Drones Zelensky said Russia hit a Kyiv data center twice, injuring three civilians, including two children, as overnight strikes killed four people. There is already a $2.5 trillion CEE economy. We just do not present it as one. The 2030 ambition should be equally plain: around 100 million Europeans, a $3-trillion-plus space, and a serious global hub for manufacturing, technology, logistics, energy and defense. That is not a forecast. It is an ambition – and, potentially, a decision. Poland can change the conversation Poland is the natural place to start. Its transformation since 1989 is one of Europe’s great economic stories, and with GDP closing in on a trillion dollars, investors can no longer treat it as just another emerging European market. Its next opportunity is not only to grow larger, but to become the anchor of a CEE that finally counts as a whole. Warsaw therefore has a direct interest in changing how the region is read abroad: from 11 small markets into one major space containing 11 national opportunities. Bucharest should want the same, and so should Prague, Bratislava, Budapest, Sofia, Ljubljana, Zagreb and the three Baltic capitals. This is not altruism; it is enlightened self-interest. When a Korean, Japanese, American, Gulf or Indian company looks at Poland – or Romania, or Czechia – it should understand in the same breath that it is entering an integrated CEE industrial ecosystem. Poland’s size does not entitle it to command the region. It gives Poland the chance to lead it. And the test of real leadership is simple: everyone at the table should leave feeling bigger, not smaller. First among equals, not hegemon. Learn from ASEAN, don’t copy it Here is the paradox to exploit. ASEAN needs 192 measures because it is still building toward a single market. CEE already has one – the European Single Market. Our economies are deeply interlocked: manufacturing chains cross borders daily, capital moves freely, Polish companies invest regionally, Czech and Slovak industry sits inside European production networks, Romania pairs a growing tech base with Black Sea access, Hungary courts Asian manufacturing, the Baltics bring digital depth, Slovenia and Croatia open the Adriatic. The pieces of a single CEE economy already exist. What is missing is not integration. It is aggregation – and the confidence to communicate scale. Don’t look only at Poland’s 37 million, Romania’s 19 million or Czechia’s 11 million. Look at an integrated space of almost 100 million. The conversation changes. A precedent, and a warning China understood part of this early. The 16+1 Initiative, launched in 2012, treated the region as a single economic and political geography – and Brussels did not like what it saw. For years, regional coordination with a powerful external sponsor read in Western Europe as fragmentation rather than complementary integration; the Three Seas Initiative met the same suspicion because of its American sponsorship, before it became clearer that it is essentially an infrastructure platform correcting the old East-West bias with stronger North-South links. The lesson: CEE needs aggregation strong enough to register in Tokyo, Seoul, Delhi, Washington and Riyadh – but European enough never to look, in Brussels, like fragmentation by another name. The old model is reaching its limits Post-communist convergence has been remarkable, but even successful models expire. Wages rise, demography tightens, the cost advantage erodes. Germany’s industrial model is under pressure. China is investor, market and competitor at once. America has rediscovered industrial policy. Defense spending is surging. And Ukraine’s reconstruction will redraw the map of Europe’s East. CEE needs a second act. The first was convergence. The second must be centrality. That means escaping the middle-income trap: economies that converge through low costs, imported capital and imported technology plateau when the advantage disappears. The next model must rely far more on innovation, internationalization, homegrown capital and homegrown champions. CEE succeeded as a destination for other people’s capital; its next challenge is producing more capital, companies and technology of its own. From Europe’s factory to Europe’s center Our geography is becoming more valuable, not less. CEE links three seas, sits between Western Europe and Ukraine, and carries the continent’s north-south corridors, fast-growing manufacturing clusters, critical energy infrastructure, deep agriculture, serious tech talent and an expanding defense-industrial base. As Europe hunts for closer, more resilient supply chains, the region is an obvious beneficiary – but geography becomes power only when someone organizes it. Imagine the proposition put on the table in Tokyo, Singapore, Delhi, Washington or Riyadh: almost 100 million consumers, approximately $2.5 trillion in output with a path beyond $3 trillion by 2030, full EU Single Market access, a manufacturing belt across the continent, three seas connected to global trade, a maturing defense-industrial ecosystem – and the principal gateway to the reconstruction of Ukraine. That is a different order of argument from 11 separate national PowerPoints. The Ukraine boost There is an even bigger reason to start now. Ukraine is coming – not tomorrow, and not without enormous difficulty. The war’s costs are devastating, reconstruction will take years, and accession will be demanding and reform-dependent on both sides. But geoeconomics rewards those who prepare before the map changes. A recovering, EU-integrated Ukraine would add a country of continental scale: one of Europe’s largest territories, extraordinary agricultural capacity, major energy resources, critical-minerals potential, a battle-tested technology and defense ecosystem, and eventually one of the world’s largest reconstruction markets. CEE brings what Ukraine will need in return – EU market access, capital, logistics, manufacturing networks, ports, energy connections, financial institutions and hard-won integration know-how. This is not simply CEE helping Ukraine rebuild. Ukraine also raises CEE’s relevance. Poland becomes a more important logistics and manufacturing hub; Romania’s Black Sea ports, Danube infrastructure and proximity to southern Ukraine gain strategic value; Slovakia and Hungary sit on key corridors; the Baltics gain weight in the northeast. The reconstruction map will not stop at Ukraine’s borders – warehouses, components, financing, logistics, energy and defense integration will all spill across the region, and Ukrainian companies themselves will expand westward. Ultimately this could shift Europe’s economic center of gravity eastward. For three decades, CEE’s story was about moving toward Western Europe. Ukraine opens another: Europe itself moving economically east. That is the Ukraine Boost – and the strongest argument for thinking at regional scale now, not once reconstruction is already underway. Five moves that need no new treaty None of this requires another bureaucracy. It requires discipline and a game plan. First, publish an annual CEE Economic Dashboard – GDP, population, output, exports, foreign direct investment, technology, defense production, infrastructure and energy in one authoritative regional picture, eventually with a parallel CEE + Ukraine Reconstruction Dashboard. Second, organize joint CEE trade and investment missions – starting with the US, the Gulf, Japan, Korea, India and ASEAN. National agencies will keep competing fiercely for factories and headquarters, as they should; but periodically they should sell the ecosystem together. This is regional coopetition. Third, build a CEE Champions agenda around what I have called the New Global Mittelstand of CEE: specialized, export-oriented firms in software, cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing, energy and defense-adjacent technology that compete through niche depth rather than sheer scale. A generation of entrepreneurs has accumulated capital and matured its family businesses; the region should stop merely protecting domestic capital and start internationalizing it. Ukraine will add another extraordinary pool of founders and companies forged under conditions few Western businesses have known. The next great CEE company can become regional on its way to global. Fourth, finish connecting the Three Seas. The initiative already supplies the infrastructure logic – north-south transport, energy and digital corridors – and Ukraine makes them more important still. The task now is less declaration, more money and delivery: rail, roads, ports, grids, pipelines, digital infrastructure, border capacity. The three seas should not merely describe our geography; they should become our economic infrastructure. Fifth, thicken the regional CEO network. Economic identity follows economic behavior. CEE becomes real when Polish companies routinely invest in Romania, Romanian companies expand into Poland, Czech capital looks to the Black Sea, Baltic technology scales southward, and Ukrainian entrepreneurs join those networks. Politicians can announce a region. CEOs have to build it. A CEE ambition for 2030 ASEAN aims to be the world’s fourth-largest economy by 2045. CEE need not copy the league-table framing. Our headline can be simpler: one hundred million people, three trillion dollars, three seas. By 2030, CEE should present itself as a $3-trillion-plus European economic space and a major global center for manufacturing, technology, logistics, energy and defense – with, beyond that, a European Ukraine increasingly integrated into this geography. This is not an anti-Brussels project. The opposite: CEE’s single greatest advantage is that it sits inside the EU and its Single Market. Nor should it be a Polish project imposed on everyone else – Warsaw’s role is to open the door, not own the house. For three decades our countries asked: how fast can we catch up with Western Europe? It was the right question for the post-communist era. The question for the next decade is different: how much economic weight can Central and Eastern Europe carry together? And Ukraine adds one more: what happens when Europe’s eastern frontier becomes one of its principal economic frontiers? CEE already has the scale of a significant world economy. Ukraine’s reconstruction and European integration could make its geoeconomic weight grow faster than the GDP numbers alone suggest. It is time the region started behaving – and presenting itself – accordingly. The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.