Welcoming speech by the Mayor of The Hague, Mr J.J. van Aartsen, to mark the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Netherlands, 23 January 2012

Welcoming speech by the Mayor of The Hague, Mr J.J. van Aartsen, to mark the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Netherlands, 23 January 2012

Your Royal Highness,
Right Honourable Prime Minister,
Honourable Chargé d’Affaires (Mr Edwin Nolan),
Your Excellencies,
Most esteemed Board of Directors of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Netherlands,
Ladies and gentlemen, 

May I welcome you all most cordially to the Atrium of our City Hall: The Hague’s own ‘White House’. 

And for those of you who come from outside The Hague: Welcome to our International City of Peace and Justice, the city where the American Chamber of Commerce in the Netherlands was founded fifty years ago!  Other events in Dutch-American history took place here in The Hague as well.

Many of you know the story of John Adams. Please allow me, however, to also call to mind a figure of Dutch history: Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp. The man who gave the Netherlands its constitution which, together with the American Constitution, is one of the oldest existing constitutions in the World. Here in The Hague Van Hogendorp was a founding father of our Kingdom, which will be celebrating its bicentenary in 2013. Thirty years before the events of 1813, that same Van Hogendorp, at the time in his twenties, travelled to the United States after a stay at the court of the Prussian king Fredrick the Great. The contrasts could hardly have been greater. In America, he became friends with no one less than Thomas Jefferson, the later president.  

125 years later, another president, Theodore – Teddy – Roosevelt, one of my favourite American presidents, made the journey in the opposite direction: he arrived in The Hague in 1907 for the Second Peace Conference, which he had himself initiated. He stayed at Hotel des Indes, that still has a thank you letter from the president with Dutch roots.  

During this conference, the foundation stone for the Peace Palace was laid, and the building was completed in 1913. This palace, which has always symbolised The Hague as Legal Capital of the World, owes its existence to the generous donation made by Scottish-American steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.  

The ties between the Netherlands - especially The Hague - and the United States have become even closer since then. And this also includes our economic ties. As the official representative of Dutch-American trade, the American Chamber of Commerce plays a major role in this respect. Thanks to ‘AmCham’, around 80 American investment projects have been drawn to the region. There are currently 50 businesses registered in The Hague whose parent companies are in the United States. These businesses have created a total of about two thousand two hundred jobs. And American companies are playing an increasingly significant role in the construction of the new The Hague Security Delta security cluster.

All this is excellent news, especially in these difficult economic times, because, as you, prime minister, so clearly and rightly put it during your visit to president Obama, it’s ultimately about one thing: jobs, jobs, jobs.  

And the increase in international business contacts also means a boost for The Hague as the centre of international law. In the past, the international community was mainly made up of nation states, but this community now includes an increasing number of NGO’s and multinationals as well. It is interesting to note that Hugo Grotius, the father of international law, held this broad view of the international community here in The Hague already in the early seventeenth century. In his Mare Liberum, he argued that the international community did not by any means consist only of states, but also of individuals, businesses and groups that we would today describe as ‘non-state actors’. 

The presence of many international organisations, NGOs and numerous international companies makes The Hague a good reflection of the tremendous diversity of actors in the international community. The Hague could therefore function as a kind of ‘laboratory par excellence’ for changes in the areas of international cooperation and international law. To put it more simply, this enables the international corporate sector and international law to stimulate and enhance one another. 

My sincere congratulations to the American Chamber of Commerce in the Netherlands on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary. I would like to raise my glass to Dutch-American business contacts in the future.