Thanks for the quick reply, Lars.
I would argue that since CTEs are essentially views (although more powerful than views in a few key ways), the seem more in line with HANA's philosphy, as I understand it, than procedural code.
I expect the HANA query optimizer will find them easier to work with, as well -- if not now, then in future versions. That's one of the reasons declarative code is always preferable to procedural code, all else being equal. Declarative code can take advantage of improvements in the query optimizer over time.