Thank you Nicoleta, Mark. Member of Parliament, Mr. Secretary, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
It’s a privilege and a pleasure to be here this morning. One of my jobs as the Ambassador of the United States to Romania is to promote American business, to promote the export of American goods and services to Romania, to encourage American investors should they choose to find or launch their business in Romania.
I could not be more really eager to do that job as in the case of Uber. Uber is a relatively new American company, certainly one of the most innovative, dynamic American companies. It has had a tremendous and sometimes disruptive but certainly innovative effect on the lives of Americans, across the cities in the United States, but now as we see here in Bucharest as well and in cities around the world.
To be here today to help launch this new green service that Uber will be providing gives me the pleasure to think about this along several dimensions. One: Uber will continue to provide a service to the residents of Bucharest and the rest of Romania that will improve their mobility and it will do so in a way that will reduce congestion here in Bucharest, a factor applying to all spaces on a daily basis unfortunately, and now with Green Uber will offer a very environmentally friendly way of doing this so they are able to contribute to the lives of citizens across several dimensions.
As Nicoleta mentioned, this service being introduced here in Bucharest after only four other cities in all of Europe – Amsterdam, Madrid, Paris and London – Bucharest now finds itself in this category of metropolitan capitals even before Munich and that is a tremendous statement about the willingness of Romanians to quickly adapt to innovation, to adapt to new technologies, to see the improvement of services that are available when that innovation and new progress present themselves.
I wish Uber and also the partner Eldrive great success. I have no doubt that that will soon be coming and if there is any other way that the United States Embassy or I and my team can assist you with in the efforts to expand the service offerings to citizens of Bucharest and citizens across Romania, please do not hesitate to let us know.
Congratulations and I wish you great success!
