"Bad show" or "good example"?

Hofreiter heads the EU committee with a child in his arms

Created: 06/22/2022, 05:43

Anton Hofreiter (Greens) chaired a session of the Bundestag with his 15-month-old son on his lap.

© Screenshot/Twitter

Progressive or inappropriate?

Green politician Anton Hofreiter is hotly debated on Twitter.

He chaired a Bundestag session with his child on his lap.

Berlin – Unusual visit to the EU committee of the German Bundestag: The 15-month-old son of the Green politician Anton Hofreiter (52) took part in the meeting on Monday on his father's lap - and thus caused a lot of discussion on social networks.

While dad "Toni" chaired the meeting as chairman of the EU committee, his blond son was playing with a toy car on the table.

Hofreiter in the Bundestag with a child on his lap - reactions are controversial

An employee of the German Bundestag's online service had published a photo of the father-son appearance on Twitter.

Many users welcomed Hofreiter's approach as "progressive".

“He leads by example.

Children are not just a mom thing," praised one user, for example.

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Others, on the other hand, think that the Greens MP wants to advertise himself with the campaign.

"Bad show at the expense of the child," writes one, another: "Everything seems very tried / fake." Some Twitter users also complain that it is not child-friendly to take a small child to a Bundestag session.

Even the fact that the son of the Green politician played with a car while his father spoke into the microphone caused criticism: "With this early childhood imprint of the next generation, we will never manage the traffic turnaround," says a Twitter user.

Anton Hofreiter pushes a stroller to the Greens parliamentary group meeting in the Bundestag.

© Michael Kappeler/dpa

Hofreiter didn't take his son to work for the first time

After the federal elections, a power struggle raged between Anton Hofreiter and Cem Özdemir for the Ministry of Agriculture, in which Hofreiter got nothing.

But Hofreiter is still talked about within the traffic light coalition - for example, he was one of the first German politicians to travel to Kyiv during the Ukraine war and vehemently demanded heavy weapons for Ukraine.

The 52-year-old had previously taken his child to work and pushed it through the corridors of the Bundestag in a stroller.