At the Hoftag diet of Rohr in June 984, he together with Archbishop Willigis of Mainz and several German princes enforced the release of the four-year-old king by his rivaling cousin Duke Henry II of Bavaria.

In 985 Otto III appointed him to succeed Margrave Rikdag in Meissen, following severe Saxon setbacks against the Slavic Lutici tribes during the Great Slav Rising.

[3] When Boleslaus II allied with the Lutici and entered into war with Mieszko I of Poland in 990, Margrave Eckard led the united German-Polish forces against Bohemia.

[4] In 996 he accompanied Otto III on his campaign to Rome, where the king was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Gregory V. Two years later, Eckard's forces helped to suppress the revolt of Crescentius the Younger in 998 by storming Castel Sant'Angelo.

The Werla meeting took place in April and Henry, through his cousins, Abbess Sophia I of Gandersheim and Adelheid I of Quedlinburg, the sisters of deceased Otto III, succeeded in having his election confirmed, at least in part by hereditary right.

Nevertheless, Eckard received enough support to commandeer the closing banquet of the Werla assembly and dine in state with Duke Bernard I of Saxony and Bishop Arnulf of Halberstadt.