The Central and East European Countries (CEECs) have begun to show signs of more or less brisk economic recovery. It may, however, take time until their economies will have offset the severe setback they had to face between October 2008 and March 2009. The degree to which individual CEECs suffered from the international financial and economic crisis varies considerably, due to a range of different factors. Poland was an exception, as its GDP growth decelerated without coming to a complete halt in 2009. This had quite an impact as the size of the Polish GDP is similar to those of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia put together. The only other country where growth did not stop entirely was Albania. In sharp contrast to these two countries, the Baltic countries and Ukraine had to face a drastic decline in their GDP. The performance of all other CEECs ranged somewhere between these two extremes. It is rather unlikely that the CEECs will any time soon be returning to GDP growth rates as high as those they had achieved in the last pre-crisis years. The European and global business environment has become less propitious, and may not improve in the near future. In addition, the producing sector has been finding it more difficult and costly to get access to borrowing. Markets are likely to remain sceptic about high current account deficits, which, if true, would entail far-reaching changes in conditions especially for the Baltic and Southeast European countries.