The controversy surrounding Ursula von der Leyen’s text messages with Pfizer’s CEO and the procurement of Covid-19 vaccines is now under scrutiny.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, has often emphasized the importance of transparency. However, the EU’s top court has recently criticized her for failing to uphold this principle.
In her 2023 State of the European Union address, von der Leyen stressed the need for transparency to prevent “autocracy’s Trojan horses” from undermining democracies.
She had previously stated in 2019 that “Transparency should characterize the work of all the members of the Commission,” and reiterated this commitment in a speech last year. Transparency and accountability were also central to her reappointment bid.
The European Court of Justice has ruled that the Commission cannot dismiss requests for access to von der Leyen’s Covid-era text messages with a simple claim of their disappearance. This ruling came after the New York Times sought to view these messages.
The existence of these texts came to light when Ursula von der Leyen mentioned her close relationship with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in an interview, discussing how it facilitated the acquisition of numerous vaccines. This was part of an April 2021 article titled: “How Europe sealed a Pfizer vaccine deal with texts and calls.”
The article featured flattering photographs of von der Leyen, reminiscent of her time as Germany’s defense minister (2013-2019) under Angela Merkel, when she faced accusations of budget mismanagement amid reports of the Bundeswehr’s equipment shortages.
According to the NYT piece, “Ms von der Leyen had been exchanging texts and calls with Bourla, the chief executive of Pfizer… Pfizer might have more doses it could offer the bloc – many more,” highlighting the role of “personal diplomacy” in securing a deal for 1.8 billion Pfizer anti-Covid doses.
After learning about these text messages, the New York Times requested to view them.
However, von der Leyen became less communicative. Consequently, the Times appealed to the EU’s top court to compel disclosure. The court has now ruled that von der Leyen cannot ignore the Times’ request without providing a valid reason for withholding the messages. The court stated that there must be a “plausible explanation to justify the non possession” of the texts, and that “the Commission has failed to explain in a plausible manner” why it considered these messages insignificant enough to be deleted.
These communications led to €71 billion in Covid vaccine contracts with Pfizer and AstraZeneca, totaling 4.6 billion doses and funded by EU taxpayers – enough for ten doses per EU citizen.
This approach may have had negative consequences that could have been avoided with broader consultation. Several EU member states, including Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, are now protesting surplus doses and urging Brussels to renegotiate the contract terms with Big Pharma. Germany alone has trashed 200 million of them. The second-highest European court noted last year the difficulty in renegotiating terms when the original terms are unclear, stating: “The Commission did not give the public sufficiently wide access to the purchase agreements for COVID-19 vaccines… The Commission did not demonstrate that wider access to those clauses would actually undermine the commercial interests of those undertakings,” it .
The details of these contracts, including their negotiation, content, and cancellation terms, remain unclear.
In 2024, Brussels indicated that its transparency would be limited to what the courts mandated. “In general, the Commission grants the widest possible public access to documents, in line with the principles of openness and transparency,” the EU stated, while also noting that a lower court ruling “confirmed that the Commission was entitled to provide only partial access.”
The EU’s top court has now ruled that the Commission can be more transparent. It remains to be seen whether this ruling will be implemented.
“`