The European Commission was wrong to refuse to release EU President Ursula von der Leyen’s messages with Pfizer chief Albert Bourla, an EU court has ruled.
EU boss von der Leyen has faced scrutiny over claims that she kept secret and deleted text messages with Bourla over Covid vaccine purchases. In 2023, the European Commission was sued by the New York Times over its refusal to release text messages between von der Leyen and the Pfizer boss. Von der Leyen and Bourla had exchanged a number of personal messages, which the commission suggested may have been deleted during the Covid pandemic.
In 2022, the European Commission said it could not and did not have to find the text messages Mrs von der Leyen exchanged with Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chief executive, during the pandemic – after the existence of the messages was laid bare in a New York Times Investigation. Reporters had asked to see the secret messages between von der Leyen and Bourla, which were sent just before a multibillion euro Covid vaccine deal between Pfizer and the EU was reached. The deal, finalised in May 2021, which involved the EU committing to purchase up to 1.8 billion doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, was the biggest by far of all the deals signed by Brussels.
The agreement established the European Union as Pfizer’s biggest single client, with the contract permitting the European Union to resell or donate the vaccines to partners.
While the Commission initially denied the existence of the messages, an April 2021 New York Times investigation confirmed their existence, with the newspaper stating that “personal diplomacy” played a big role in the deal.
The Commission refused a freedom of information request for the messages, sparking a complaint to the European Ombudsman. The watchdog said that amounted to maladministration in a damning report.
Lawyers for The New York Times successfully argued that the refusal to disclose the smartphone communications broke European transparency laws.
On Wednesday, the EU’s top court found that the European Commission failed to plausibly explain why it does not possess the text messages, which were sent at a time when the commission and pharmaceutical bosses were locked in negotiations for billions of euros worth of Covid jabs. The court annulled the Commission’s decision to deny the New York Times access to the messages.
The court found that The New York Times had put forward relevant and consistent evidence indicating the existence of text messages between the President of the Commission and the CEO of Pfizer regarding the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines.
“These contracts were totally unprecedented in a totally unprecedented context,” said an EU official ahead of Wednesday morning’s ruling.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that the Commission “has not given a plausible explanation to justify the non-possession of the requested documents.”
The ECJ, in its ruling, said that the Commission cannot simply claim it does not have the requested documents; it must provide credible explanations that allow both the public and the Court to understand why those documents cannot be located.
The EU’s General Court said in a statement that the Commission had “failed to explain in a plausible manner why it considered that the text messages exchanged in the context of the procurement of Covid-19 vaccines did not contain important information…the retention of which must be ensured.”
“The Court recalls that the purpose of the Access to Documents Regulation is to give the fullest possible effect to the right of public access to documents held by the institutions, the court said in the ruling.
“Thus, in principle, all documents of the institutions should be accessible to the public. However, where an institution states that a document does not exist in the context of an application for access, the non-existence of that document is presumed, in accordance with the presumption of veracity attaching to that statement. That presumption may, however, be rebutted on the basis of relevant and consistent evidence produced by the applicant.”
In reaction, the Dutch MEP Raquel García Hermida-van der Walle said that the decision is a “slam dunk for transparency,” with the member of the liberal Renew Europe group saying: “People just want and are allowed to know how decisions are made, it is essential in a democracy. Even if it was done over a text message.”
Independent MEP Michael McNamara previously said that it didn’t seem to be the case that the EU boss was “committed to transparency and openness,” referencing the Pfizer texts.