An op-ed by Radu Magdin. Will the region remain the West’s cheap assembly line and strategic buffer zone? Or can it become a genuine economic pole in its own right between the United States and China — a place that does not just manufacture, but designs, finances, owns, and scales? That is what is at stake. For three decades, Central and Eastern Europe has been one of the great economic success stories of modern Europe. The region moved from central planning to markets, from political transition to EU integration, from fragility to growth. It built factories, logistics hubs, software firms, and export capacity. It learned speed, discipline, and adaptation. But the old growth model is reaching its limits. For years, the region prospered by offering relatively cheap, skilled labor, proximity to Western markets, and openness to foreign capital. That formula worked. It helped countries like Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic become indispensable to European manufacturing and supply chains. Yet indispensable is not the same as sovereign. Too much of Central and Eastern Europe still sits in the middle of value chains rather than at the top of them. It assembles brilliantly, but too rarely owns the brand, the patents, the financing power, or the strategic decisions. It produces for others. It scales under other people’s flags. And in a harsher world of industrial rivalry, security competition, and economic blocs, that is no longer enough. The region now needs a new ambition: not simply to converge with the West, but to produce its own champions — companies that can compete globally while staying strategically anchored in Central and Eastern Europe. That means building a true ‘CEE Inc.’ The good news is that the region already has candidates. UiPath showed that a company born in Bucharest can become a global name in automation and list in New York. Poland’s InPost disrupted logistics. Allegro proved that e-commerce platforms of scale can emerge from the region. Croatia’s Rimac became a symbol of advanced engineering and next-generation mobility. Estonia’s Bolt showed that platform businesses from CEE can expand internationally. PPF demonstrated how financial and investment power can be built from within the broader region. None of these companies are a Samsung. Not yet. But they show that CEE does not lack talent, managerial capacity, or ambition. What it lacks is enough scale, capital, patience, and strategic protection to turn promising firms into durable global leaders. And the external environment is changing in a way that makes this challenge more urgent, not less. The war in Ukraine has changed Europe’s economic map. Defense production, energy resilience, military logistics, digital infrastructure, and dual-use technologies are no longer niche topics. They are becoming central to how Europe thinks about industrial policy. Money that once would have gone almost exclusively into welfare, consumption, or low-politics modernization is now increasingly being redirected toward rearmament, resilience, and strategic autonomy. Central and Eastern Europe should not watch this shift from the sidelines. It should shape it. Look at drones. Before the war, they were often treated as a narrow defense niche. Today they sit at the crossroads of warfare, software, AI, sensors, manufacturing, and logistics. Poland and Ukraine are already showing what a regional ecosystem can look like when necessity drives innovation. The same logic applies to ammunition, repair hubs, cyber capacity, satellite-linked communications, and energy infrastructure. In all these sectors, CEE has a chance not merely to host production, but to develop ownership and expertise. This is where the region’s future economic model may be decided. Because the choice is no longer between industry and innovation. The real choice is whether CEE will continue to be mainly a lower-cost extension of Western industrial systems, or whether it can use this moment of European reindustrialization to build firms of its own. That is easier said than done. Western Europe will not passively accept serious competitors in its own backyard. When a promising company appears in Central and Eastern Europe, the instinct in larger economies may often be to partner with it, absorb it, or acquire it before it grows into a rival. So let us be clear: building CEE champions will require not just entrepreneurship, but strategy. First, the region must think in terms of regional scale, not fragmented national markets. Separately, most CEE economies are too small to sustain many world-class firms. Together, they represent a large and increasingly sophisticated market. Companies that can expand first across the region are far better placed to compete later in Berlin, London, New York, or Singapore. Second, CEE needs more growth capital that does not automatically lead to foreign takeover. The region has talent and ideas, but too often the decisive scale-up money comes with relocation, control dilution, or eventual acquisition. If the goal is to keep headquarters, R&D, and strategic decision-making in the region, then pension funds, sovereign vehicles, development banks, and private investors need to behave accordingly. Third, the region must connect its engineering culture to industrial policy. Central and Eastern Europe is rich in coders, engineers, mathematicians, and technical universities. But too much of that talent still feeds outsourced services or foreign-owned production. Fourth, CEE should make full use of its transatlantic position. The region is deeply embedded in the EU single market, but also increasingly important to America’s strategic view of Europe. That is an advantage. A CEE company should be able to raise capital in New York, build in Romania or Poland, test at scale in the region, and sell across Europe. The broader point is this: CEE can no longer afford to think of success only in terms of GDP growth, factory openings, or being praised as “resilient.” Resilience matters. But resilience without ownership can still leave a region dependent. A country may have jobs and exports, yet still lack control over technology, capital, and strategy. That is why the next chapter cannot simply be about catching up. It must be about moving up. The first post-1989 era was about transition. The second was about integration. The third must be about leadership. Not every company in the region will become a global giant. Nor should governments try to micromanage markets or imitate Asia mechanically. But the broader lesson from places like South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore remains relevant: serious economic advancement happens when states, capital, and business leaders align around long-term goals. CEE needs its own version of that ambition, adapted to European rules and regional realities. The opportunity is real. Europe is re-arming. Supply chains are being redrawn. Industrial policy is back. Defense-tech, energy, logistics, software, and advanced manufacturing are converging. The region has the workforce, location, security relevance, and entrepreneurial base to benefit. But history does not reward potential. It rewards those who organize it. Central and Eastern Europe has already shown that it can transform. The question now is whether it can scale. Whether it can keep more of its winners at home. Whether it can create companies that are not just efficient suppliers, but strategic leaders. In the end, the choice is stark. Either Central and Eastern Europe builds its own Samsungs — in technology, logistics, defense, energy, and advanced industry — or it remains, however prosperous, somebody else’s subcontractor. That is the real test of CEE Inc.