Dear AmCham Members, Partners and Friends,
Welcome to your 22 January AmCham Newsletter number 198!
Last week was challenging, busy and very interesting. I believe we have all started the new year with enthusiasm and passion for success! It was especially interesting to see the very strong and positive focus on business issues demonstrated during the excellent (as always!) FEDIL New Year reception. The keynote speech by Adel Al-Saleh, the CEO of SES, was a rousing announcement of the challenges and opportunities for Luxembourg to renew and reinforce its leadership in Space. Speaking strongly from his heart without any notes, Mr. Al-Saleh was both confident and tough, honestly identifying the challenges his company (and Luxembourg by proxy!) face as SES tackles the recent absorption of its biggest historical competitor (and thereby doubling in size). He announced that this merger was equally an enormous opportunity and a huge risk which will require every employee to be hands on and totally committed to evolve and grow to achieve the future opportunities and success. His absolute commitment and passion were very moving. We look forward bringing you this content in our next week’s newsletter.
Following his speech, our Prime Minister, Luc Frieden, painted an equally powerful and positive vision of renewed government actions to support and unleash the enormous strength of the Luxembourg business community. During his speech, which we are proud to reproduce today, and following during the social networking portion of the evening, Mr. Frieden was self-confident, committed and sincere, acknowledging the challenges we face together building the future we all want and need to ensure our prosperity for the benefit of our entire society. I was personally pleased to have a few minutes of private conversation with him and impressed by his understanding of the importance of the expat international community we in AmCham represent. I am confident our concerns will be heard and given the attention they deserve.
I look forward to continuing this discussion with you all at our own AmCham New Year reception on 28 January at the Spuerkeess headquarters building on Avenue de la Liberté. Our guests of honor and speakers which we invited will be the President of the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies, Claude Wiseler, the Finance Minister, Gilles Roth and the US Ambassador Stacey Feinberg. My thanks to all of you for your enthusiasm to attend this event. My thanks to Spuerkeess for allowing us to use their wonderful venue and my thanks to Amazon for sponsoring the networking reception.
We have a wonderful high-quality crowd of AmCham members and guests signed up to join us. If your plans change and you can no longer attend, please let Anne@amcham.lu know so we can reallocate your seat to someone on our waiting list. Likewise, if you want to come but don’t have a confirmed invitation let Daniel@amcham.lu know and we will do our best to accommodate you.
We are very pleased in this Newsletter edition to feature an interview with Nina Wojtczak, the daughter of the former Polish Ambassador to Luxembourg, who has just finished her first year attending an American university and has now just started an internship at the Luxembourg embassy in Washington. As you will read, she has had a very positive and eye-opening experience studying in the United States. Particularly noteworthy are her very positive expressions about the intense way American education engages and involves students actively in classroom activities, thereby promoting and actively developing leadership ability. I think you will enjoy this article and this first hand report on America which is so different from what we so often see on the daily news feeds…
Following on with this point, included in this issue please see the invitation from Ambassador Feinberg and the US Embassy for Luxembourg students to apply for the opportunity to attend the annual Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Fellowship program. This experience could really be a hugely positive life changing opportunity for a young student attendee from Luxembourg. Please check it out and feel free to pass along the opportunity to someone deserving.
This year of 2026 is the 30th year of existence for our American Chamber of Commerce in Luxembourg. We will celebrate by doing more and better to serve you, our members, and this country of Luxembourg we all love. Thank you for your support which gives us the strength to serve!
My respect and very best wishes,
Paul Schonenberg
Chairman and CEO
AmCham.lu