Remarks by Ambassador Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis at the Exchange Building Topping Off Ceremony - as delivered:

Minister Németh, Mr. Márton, Mr. Gombos, Vice Mayor Puskás, colleagues and friends, I would like to thank you and everyone here for coming to the topping off ceremony of the future U.S. Embassy building.

Today we are celebrating the achievement of a major milestone in the construction of this building.

As you can see with your own eyes, there has been an enormous amount of progress made on this construction project to renovate the building next to our current Embassy. I want to congratulate the construction team and all of the workers who have been out here rain or shine for achieving this milestone. This has been a challenging, unique project, and you have been up to the task and gone beyond expectations.

As I’ve told my Embassy colleagues, it’s been a bit noisy around here lately, but this is good, because construction noise is the sound of progress.

Prior to becoming an Ambassador I spent 18 years in construction as a land developer. I did not bring my hard hat to Budapest with me, but clearly that experience has been a very important part of being able to solve what really was a Rubik’s Cube to figure out how to proceed with this very complicated project.

I want to say a special thanks to those from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hungarian National Asset Management Agency or MNV, the DVM Group, and the construction contractors HBM and CFE for the essential role that you have played in keeping this project on track and making it a reality.

I am also especially grateful for the overall support of the Hungarian Government, especially Prime Minister Orbán, and the support they have provided for this project and the property exchange agreement that the United States and Hungary signed in 2007.

Throughout the project, our two sides have enjoyed an incredibly productive partnership in getting the design for the new buildings completed and the construction work started and moving along at a rapid pace.

While the United States is extremely pleased to be able to expand our Embassy building here at Szabadság tér, we know that the Hungarian people will be very pleased to receive several historic properties from us, including the property at Táncsics Mihály.

I must tell you that we Americans are very fond of the Táncsics Mihály property, where in recent years we have hosted several unforgettable Independence Day celebrations. At the same time, we understand how important this property is for the Hungarian nation, so we are pleased to be able to return it.

The United States Government looks forward to completing this project and moving into an expanded Embassy building next year. This move will allow us to consolidate our offices at one location. By doing so, we will be able to operate much more efficiently and improve our overall security.

In closing, I’d like to stress that the wonderful progress we’ve achieved so far in completing our property exchange agreement is a great example, as Minister Németh also said, of the strength of our bilateral relationship and how we can achieve great things through cooperation.

I remember very well the first meetings that I had on this building and discussions of where the boiler should go. How far we have come since!

Thank you very much.

Source: U.S. Embassy Budapest

Photo: Ambassador Kounalakis with Minister of National Development Németh at the ceremony (Embassy photo by Attila Németh)