
Dear AmCham members, partners and friends,
Welcome to the 23 January 2025 issue of your amcham.lu digital newsletter! We are delighted you are interested to read our free, public service, English-language summary of business and expat-focused information. If you like what we are reporting, or if you have questions or comments, please contact me at: Paul@amcham.lu. I will appreciate your comments, questions and advice… and do my best to respond back to you. Likewise, please help us and our objectives by sharing this newsletter with your friends and colleagues and urge them to sign up to get this free communication by clicking here. Please also tell your friends and colleagues that we also welcome them to join our AmCham family of members with quite affordable membership fees via our application form which can be found here. There are many very good reasons why AmCham is the largest and most active private Chamber of Commerce in Luxembourg. The AmCham team and I (Paul@amcham.lu) will be happy to discuss and explain all of this and welcome being contacted.
We have been very busy since the publication of our first newsletter of 2025 last week! I was personally very pleased to be invited and have the opportunity given to me by LetzPact to be their guest of honor and explain “What happened, Why it happened and What are the consequences for Luxembourg, Europe and the World” now that Donald Trump has again been elected President of the United States. I sincerely thank LetzPact for their kind invitation and for their management of this excellent event at Tero House 17! Last Thursday, I published in this newsletter a summary of the remarks I gave at this event. In this newsletter issue now, I am likewise pleased to give you all the links to the two Youtube videos that Daniel McKenzie has kindly recorded (Part 1, Part 2). Enjoy watching them and feel free to contact me with questions, comments or recommendations.
Last week on Thursday, I attended, with some sadness, the going-away party for Ambassador Barrett and his wife. Both the Ambassador and his wife served the USA with honor, integrity, wisdom and considerable friendliness. They did a great job and will be missed.
Also, on Thursday of last week, I attended the FEDIL New Year reception at The Box. As always, that event held an A-list crowd and constituted a very rich networking environment. I enjoyed meeting and talking with many of you who attended, many others and also was particularly pleased to have a nice conversation with our Prime Minister!
Last evening, AmCham held our annual New Year’s reception hosted by Spuerkeess and jointly sponsored by Amazon (both of whom I most sincerely thank!). I also deeply thank all of our members and invitees who joined us for this completely sold-out (but free!) event with 240 attendees!
When we had our Thanksgiving Gala in November 2024 at Cercle Cité, we were honored to have our Finance Minister, Gilles Roth, join us as our guest of honor and principal speaker. At that time, I acknowledged issues associated with taxes to be of highest importance to our member companies and thanked him for feeling our pain and his initial successful first efforts to reduce the tax burdens imposed on both companies and employees. Be assured our excellent AmCham Tax committee is very busy working with the Ministry of Finance to further improve Luxembourg tax policies and their implementation which impact our companies and employees. Our goal is to remake Luxembourg tax policy and implementation to ensure Luxembourg is, and remains, the best domicile location in Europe for international companies and their employees.
Yesterday evening, we invited Mr. Léon Gloden, our Minister for Home Affairs who is responsible for the Luxembourg National Police and relations with the communes along with Mr. Claude Meisch, Minister both for Education, Children and Youth and for Housing. We honor and appreciate these two Ministers and stress the importance of these three Ministries to ensure the health, safety and fair treatment of our constituents of local and international companies, their employees and the families of these employees. Our thanks to both Ministers for their excellent presentations and their dedication to feel the pain and address the concerns of our community as they make and enact their governance decisions.
I was particularly pleased and honored to accept at this event last night, on behalf of AmCham, a letter from Minister Meisch confirming that AmCham has submitted a formal request for a 75% financial subsidy entitlement for the development of affordable housing in support of our AmCham members! We have been concerned and working on affordable housing for businesspeople for over two years and are very pleased we have succeeded to begin being part of the solution, rather than just complaining about this very serious problem. With his letter Minister Meisch has confirmed that AmCham is the first and only non-profit organization in Luxembourg to have taken concrete actions in anticipation of receiving Luxembourg government funding for projects which address the critical need for affordable housing for our employees! Watch this space or engage with us and our Real Estate Committee to learn more.
We were honored Minister Meisch said in his remarks; “We are looking forward to enhancing constructive dialogue with AmCham to explore how this initiative can become reality. Thank you for leading by example, for showing how the private sector can play a pivotal role in creating solutions that benefit not only business but also the entire community. Your efforts embody the kind of partnership that is essential for addressing the challenges of today and building a brighter tomorrow.”
Below in this issue, we are pleased to publish a farewell letter from Ambassador Barrett. We are also pleased to publish the detailed letter with policy analysis and recommendations prepared by our sister organization, AmCham.eu, to the Polish government which has just assumed the Presidency of the EU for the next six months. We at AmCham.lu fully support this analysis, agenda and these recommendations from our sister AmCham accredited to the EU.
Enjoy also the other information below. As always, Bibi Wintersdorf has given us a brilliant food recipe for you to prepare and serve at home to your family and friends. And there is great information to help you and your employees get discounts while purchasing the things you need and want from our Member Benefits Club (MBC) partners! (if you are not an MBC card holder, please contact Jorge@amcham.lu to find out more how you and your company can get involved with this!).
I cannot say too often, how much I and we appreciate and are dedicated to helping and supporting our member companies and their employees.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
With respect, appreciation and kindest regards,
Paul Schonenberg
Chairman and CEO
AmCham.lu