Sweden climate minister brings baby to EU meeting, highlights parental leave

Romina Pourmokhtari walked into the EU climate ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg on Thursday with her three-month-old son, Adam, in tow. An EU Council official said it was the first known time a baby had attended a meeting of EU ministers. For Pourmokhtari, Sweden’s minister for climate and the environment, the appearance was meant to show that parenthood and senior government office do not have to be treated as mutually exclusive.

Pourmokhtari, 30, became the youngest-ever minister in a Swedish cabinet when Ulf Kristersson named her to the post in 2022. The Government Offices of Sweden put her back in charge of climate and environment issues on June 15 after she had been away since March 2 to care for her child. Her husband traveled with her to Luxembourg to help look after Adam, and she said the arrangement also required a modern partner willing to make that work.

Sweden’s parental benefit system provides 480 days of paid leave for one child. Of those days, 390 are paid at an income-based level and 90 at a flat minimum rate, with reserved non-transferable days to ensure that both parents take part when leave is shared. Under the country’s rules for joint custody, each parent is entitled to 240 days of parental leave. The European Union adopted its Work-Life Balance Directive in 2019 to improve gender equality by addressing uneven care responsibilities, and the European Institute for Gender Equality’s 2026 Gender Equality Index places parental leave design at the center of its assessment of whether work and family life can be balanced equally.