EU court to decide if von der Leyen's vaccine texts stay secret
The Court of Justice of the EU will rule on Wednesday whether the European Commission had the right to conceal correspondence that its president, Ursula von der Leyen, conducted with the CEO of the American company Pfizer via SMS. This concerns the contract for COVID-19 vaccines.
Although the case involves an agreement made by the EC with Pfizer four years ago, the verdict could be significant for the future. It will determine the extent to which the EC must be transparent in its actions.
The complaint against the EC to the CJEU was filed by the American newspaper "The New York Times" and its journalist, Matina Stevis, who in 2022 unsuccessfully demanded access to the conversations that von der Leyen had with Pfizer's CEO, Albert Bourla, regarding vaccines. As part of the third agreement with this American company, which was concluded in May 2021, the EC reserved 1.8 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine for all member countries.
Among Brussels officials, there is still a belief that this contract was one of the greatest successes of the first von der Leyen EC. As an EU source conveyed to journalists on Monday, Pfizer was at that time and probably remains the only company capable of providing the necessary number of doses for Europe.
It also offered a vaccine that could be adapted to new variants of the virus. Other companies did not have such capabilities, and scientists were predicting that repeated vaccination would be necessary due to the virus's mutation.
The journalist requested disclosure of the conversations, the EC refused
However, the way von der Leyen conducted trade negotiations with Bourla has sparked controversy. In April 2021, the Pfizer CEO told "The New York Times" in an interview that he had such a good relationship with the EC president that they exchanged messages via SMS. The newspaper's correspondent therefore asked the EC to disclose the details of the conversations, but the EC refused.
The then-EC Vice President Věra Jourová argued that "short-lived and ephemeral" communications are not archived and do not fall within the scope of the EU's transparency rules regarding access to documents. This is also how the EC defended itself before the CJEU. The ruling will be issued on Wednesday by the General Court of the EU, a lower instance of the CJEU.
