
Dear AMCHAM members, partners and friends,
Welcome to the 152nd edition of your AMCHAM.lu digital newsletter! We are happy to serve you!
This issue is the last issue of the newsletter that we will publish before beginning the summer holiday period. Be assured we will continue to work on your behalf. But with many of you being away from Luxembourg taking well deserved vacations, we will take this time to until mid-September to focus on other projects.
Instead of an interview this week, we will use that space to catch up with the photos for some of the recent events we have been hosting and attending.
Despite a bit of rain, the annual Independence Day reception and party was held at the U.S. Embassy on 2 July and was a great success! It looked like 250 people attended this event. Government leaders included Luxembourg Prime Minister Luc Frieden and Minister of Economy Gilles Roth leading the CSV attendees and Corinne Cahen leading the DP representatives. The Diplomatic Corps was led by the longest serving Ambassador to Luxembourg, Piotr Wojtczak, the Polish Ambassador, accompanied by his wife and daughter, the French Ambassador, Claire Ligniers-Counathe, British Ambassador Fleur Thomas, Japanese Ambassador Tadahiro Matsubara with his wife and many others. The business community was well represented too and I was especially pleased to see and have conversations with the Executive Vice President of Guardian Industries, Guus Boekhoudt and the CEO of SES, Abdel Al-Saleh.
Over a dozen companies donated to sponsor this event contributing to an abundance of very American BBQ foods and drinks finished off with Ben and Jerry’s ice cream at the end.
Attached please find Ambassador’s Barrett’s excellent speech and the photo deck from this excellent garden party reception!
On the 4th of July itself, Miami University Dolibois European Center in Differdange put on an excellent afternoon BBQ, pictures of which can be found here. Also on the 4th of July, I attended an afternoon family party and fireworks display at Spangdahlem Air Base across the border near Bitburg. This F-16 fighter base is one of the premier U.S. military bases in the NATO alliance. I appreciated being invited and having the opportunity to spend this time with the patriotic men and women stationed on the base and who work hard every day to keep us all safe. Please see the photos from the base community relations team here.
Over the past weekend, AmCham sponsored the tribute cup given to the winning team at the Roude Léiw Polo Club tournament held just outside of the Luxembourg city borders in Helfent. We were pleased to have a private hospitality booth just next to our friends from the RomLux Business Forum for this two day tournament. Over 200 AmCham member registered for this last AmCham event before breaking for the summer. In addition to two days of tournament play, there was an excellent all White Gala dinner party during which we awarded our trophy to the winners of the day team. Enjoy the photos which can be found (here).
During this summer break period, we will continue to be meeting with the government to make progress on the Make-Luxembourg-Strong agenda which we sent to Prime Minister Frieden and his principle ministers just after the national elections last year. We hope to share a progress report on this with you in the fall.
We wish you a successful and happy summer break period and hope you enjoy all of the content of this newsletter!
With respect and our very best wishes,
Paul Schonenberg
Chairman and CEO
AmCham.lu