The European Commission has been deemed incorrect in its decision to withhold text messages exchanged between Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer’s CEO, Albert Bourla, during crucial negotiations for Covid-19 vaccine procurement. This ruling comes from the EU’s General Court, which stated that the Commission failed to provide a credible rationale for denying public access to these communications when a journalist sought them in 2021.
In 2021, Pfizer inked multi-billion euro vaccine contracts with the EU, including an agreement for an additional 1.8 billion doses. As the situation stands, the details of the messages between von der Leyen and Bourla remain undisclosed, contributing to a growing controversy in Brussels referred to as ‘Pfizergate.’
A landmark ruling for transparency
Transparency International, an anti-corruption advocacy group, has praised the court’s decision as a significant triumph for transparency within the EU. The organization emphasized that this ruling could be a driving force in promoting a less restrictive approach to freedom of information.
Ursula von der Leyen has held the position of Commission president since 2019 and faced the daunting challenge of overseeing the EU’s response to the Covid pandemic shortly thereafter. After securing a second five-year term late last year, the recent court ruling presents a potential threat to her reputation, especially due to the perceived opacity surrounding the Pfizer vaccine negotiations, a matter in which she was deeply involved.
Details behind the controversy
The controversy first gained attention in April 2021, when journalist Matina Stevis of the New York Times uncovered that von der Leyen had been negotiating directly with the Pfizer CEO following the regulatory approval of the Covid vaccine developed by his German partner, BioNTech. This revelation prompted investigative journalist Alexander Fanta to file a Freedom of Information request in hopes of obtaining the message exchanges from January 2021 to May 2022. However, the European Commission denied the request, claiming it lacked the relevant documents.
According to the Commission’s transparency protocols, all officials, including the president, are required to archive their communications. Nonetheless, text messages on mobile devices represent a complex area, leading to a significant debate over whether they should be classified as official records. One EU official recently noted that SMS communications are not routinely treated as public documents and are often left unrecorded.
Fanta escalated the issue to the European Ombudsman in 2021, resulting in an inquiry that determined the Commission’s failure to seek out the text messages beyond its standard record-keeping practices constituted maladministration. Subsequently, Stevis and the New York Times pursued the matter in court after their requests for the messages went unanswered.
In its judgment, the court highlighted that the Commission’s reasoning relied on “either on assumptions or on changing or imprecise information,” while the journalists successfully refuted its claims. The court clarified that if a presumption is disproven, the onus is on the Commission to establish whether the documents in question are nonexistent or unavailable. Furthermore, the Commission did not provide clarity on whether the text messages had been deleted, nor if such deletion, if it occurred, was intentional or whether von der Leyen had switched mobile devices since then.