By Kate Abnett<\/p>\n
LUXEMBOURG, June 25 (Reuters) – EU governments‘ ministers gathered for a long day’s discussion of climate change policies on Thursday were surprised by a fresh-faced participant at their \u200cnegotiating table: a three-month-old baby.<\/p>\n
Swedish climate minister Romina Pourmokhtari brought her son, Adam, to \u200cthe EU council meeting in Luxembourg, to highlight the benefits of parental leave policies which don’t force women to choose between \u200bwork and family responsibilities.<\/p>\n
„I wanted to showcase being an example of not having to make that choice. Which, of course, also requires having a partner that’s not a dinosaur, someone who’s quite modern and up for it to tag along,“ Pourmokhtari told Reuters.<\/p>\n
An EU Council official confirmed it was the first time, to \u200cthe institution’s knowledge, that a baby \u2060had joined a meeting of EU ministers.<\/p>\n
Pourmokhtari, 30, was the youngest government minister in Sweden’s history when she took office in 2022. She has just returned \u2060from parental leave, while her husband is on leave until Sweden’s election in September and travelled with her to Luxembourg to care for Adam.<\/p>\n
Sweden has one of the world’s most generous parental leave policies, funded by \u200bthe country’s \u200bsystem of high taxes, which has become a \u200bpolitical flashpoint in the election campaign.<\/p>\n
Parents receive \u200cabout 16 months of paid leave in total. Of this, 90 days are reserved for each parent individually and cannot be transferred to the other. If a parent does not take their allotted portion, those days are forfeited.<\/p>\n
These non-transferable periods \u2014 often called „dad months“ \u2014 were introduced to encourage fathers to spend more time with their children.<\/p>\n
Pourmokhtari credits this policy, and support from her team, with making it „much less controversial“ \u200cfor her husband to care for Adam while she works.<\/p>\n
She \u200bsaid supportive policies were not just a question of spending \u200btaxes on longer leave periods — and urged \u200bgovernments to also consider more flexible rules on parents sharing leave and affordable \u200cchildcare.<\/p>\n
„It’s creating a lot of value that \u200bshouldn’t be underestimated. Value that \u200bmight not always be economic — but in the end, might also be economic, in not having burnt-out workers,“ she said, referring to the burden on many parents struggling to juggle \u200bwork and family.<\/p>\n
Krzysztof Bolesta, Poland’s deputy \u200cclimate minister, said it had been no trouble having a baby in a political \u200bmeeting.<\/p>\n
„I think it’s great,“ he told Reuters. „It’s not a handicap, it’s just a part \u200bof life.“<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Kate Abnett, Editing by William Maclean)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Kate Abnett LUXEMBOURG, June 25 (Reuters) – EU governments‘ ministers gathered for a long day’s discussion of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1120774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3933],"tags":[331,332,236623,548,663,158,3934,3935,13,20187,1953,14,15,236624,236622,12,236625,197364],"class_list":["post-1120773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-aktuelle-nachrichten","tag-aktuelle-news","tag-climate-change-policies","tag-eu","tag-europa","tag-europaeische-union","tag-europe","tag-european-union","tag-headlines","tag-luxembourg","tag-minister","tag-nachrichten","tag-news","tag-parental-leave","tag-romina-pourmokhtari","tag-schlagzeilen","tag-supportive-policies","tag-sweden"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@de\/116810802168691006","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1120773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1120774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1120773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1120773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1120773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}