Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Deputy Governor,
Dear Consul General,
Dear Hamburg Ambassadors and
guests from the Sister City Friendship Committee,

Hamburg is the second biggest city in Germany, which is number four of the national economies of the world. The Port of Hamburg is the third largest port in Europe and provides connections to 950 ports in almost 180 countries.

Hamburg has a rich history in trade and business and maintains vital partnerships all over the world. And they mean a lot to us.

Hamburg earned its prominent role among the European metropoles mostly because of its economic strength, for which good international relations are essential.

Our transatlantic partnership has always been of great importance to us and we look back on a very successful relationship with the United States.

In times when federal governments disagree on big political issues like free trade and international politics, it is even more important that we do our best, to keep our transatlantic partnership alive and stable.

Hamburg and Chicago are sister cities. This is a strong foundation for a great exchange in all kind of fields.

Therefore it is important to get to know each other better, how we build and how we live our cooperations.

I would like to thank the team from Hamburg Invest for the seminar prior to this reception about Hamburg’s economy and what kind of business opportunities we offer.

In Hamburg we want to develop the solutions of tomorrow. We call ourselves, “City of Solutions”.

Let me give you a brief insight, what this means, by talking about transportation – a key issue for growing and modern metropoles worldwide.

Hamburg has successfully applied for the ITS World Congress which will take place in 2021. A forum for more than 10.000 international experts in transportation.

And we have already started: In April 2016 the Hamburg Senate implemented an ITS strategy to give us a clear roadmap of how to transform our city into a laboratory for mobility solutions in close cooperation with companies, research institutions and a large number of stakeholders.

Hamburg's aim is to become a model city for intelligent mobility and logistics.

Intelligent parking, intelligent construction management, zero emission transportation, automated and connected driving are only a few examples for future projects.

By the time the ITS will take place, you will see the most cutting edge transport technologies right in our city.

We are not doing this alone.

We have wide support from the German Federal Government, from all the other 15 federal states and from over 100 industry partners: Deutsche Bahn, Siemens, Telekom, BMW, Daimler Benz, Volkswagen and many more.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
what I want to point out is this: Hamburg puts a great emphasis on partnerships. And I would like to let you know that we are open for further cooperating partners and interesting projects.

I thank you for joining us tonight and would like to welcome you on behalf of the City of Hamburg.

Thank you very much

Es gilt das gesprochene Wort.