From the Leyen Commission and Central/Eastern Europe - not a love marriage, but both need each other

The new EU Commission President was sometimes perceived as not very friendly to the Eastern part of Europe - although she was chosen by voices from the region. The new Commission President is also credited with decisively advancing the rule of law topic. Apart from political noise, however, less negative consequences for the economies of the Central and Eastern European countries are to be expected than the headlines suggest. For example, relevant and sharpened rule-of-law procedures are unlikely to be executed much more rigorously than general economic policy coordination in the EU. Moreover, agricultural policy funds or other fEU unds should continue to flow, even if there are some cuts in Cohesion funding. Moreover, investors are currently desperately looking for interest-bearing long-term investment/infrastructure opportunities, preferably in the EU but not necessarily in the euro area; this is especially true of emerging competitors of European financial institutions. And apart from the economic tangent, the new EU Commission President will probably also need more political support in Central and Eastern Europe to secure power and build consensus on other major EU policy issues than was perhaps initially thought. To this extent, the "nuclear option" of partially cutting EU funds for individual Central and Eastern European states could still be a long way off and be more ado about little. More on this in a joint contribution with Marcus How on BNE Intellinews.