‘Pfizergate’ verdict: EU Commission wrong to block access to von der Leyen’s secret texts

BRUSSELS ― The European Commission was wrong to refuse the release of Ursula von der Leyen’s text messages with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, an EU court has found.

Reporters had asked to see the secret messages between the Commission president and the drug company boss, which they exchanged ahead of a multibillion euro vaccine deal agreed between Pfizer and the EU.

The judgment is likely to have huge repercussions for transparency and accountability in the EU and delivers a massive blow to von der Leyen’s reputation.

The decision is a “slam dunk for transparency,” said Dutch MEP Raquel García Hermida-van der Walle, who is co-negotiating changes to a law governing access to documents on behalf of the liberal Renew Europe group. “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.”

In a statement, the EU’s General Court said 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 nub of the issue is whether text messages should be classed as documents and therefore eligible to be published in the name of transparency. While campaigners and many external observers say they should be treated just like any other means of official communication when related to policymaking, the Commission said they should not.

“Transparency has always been of paramount importance for the Commission and President von der Leyen,” the Commission said in a statement after the ruling. “We will continue to strictly abide by the solid legal framework in place to enforce our obligations.” It said it would “decide on next steps.”

Credible explanations

The existence of the texts — which the Commission initially didn’t confirm — were revealed in an interview von der Leyen gave with the New York Times in 2021. 

But the EU executive told the court in Luxembourg during a preliminary hearing last year that their contents weren’t significant enough for them to be classed as documents — so therefore they weren’t registered and available to be released to journalists.

In its statement, the court added: “The Commission cannot merely state that it does not hold the requested documents but must provide credible explanations enabling the public and the Court to understand why those documents cannot be found.”

Major embarrassment

The case was legally tricky for von der Leyen because she not only personally signed off on the bloc’s largest vaccine contract, she also presides over the very institution tasked with enforcing EU law, which includes principles of transparency and accountability. With the court ruling against her, it provides political ammunition to a wide range of critics.

It is also a major embarrassment given it’s just a few months after she publicly pledged to defend standards of transparency, efficiency and probity in her second term.

The case was instigated by The New York Times and its former Brussels bureau chief, which brought an action against the Commission’s decision not to release the text messages in 2022.

The existence of the messages was revealed in an April 2021 New York Times interview, where Bourla described their exchanges as fostering “deep trust” and facilitating the negotiation of a substantial vaccine deal. This agreement, finalized in May 2021, involved the EU committing to purchase up to 1.8 billion doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, the largest by far of all the deals signed by Brussels.