New York Times takes EU Commission to court over ‘Pfizergate’ affair

The New York Times is suing the European Commission for failing to make public the text messages exchanged between Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the CEO of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read the original French article here.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen became embroiled in a scandal after her office was reluctant to make public the SMS texts von der Leyen exchanged with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla over the purchase of 1.8 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses.

The New York Times, the first media to have brought the affair to light in April 2021, filed its case against the European Commission on 25 January, though it has only been visible on the public register of the EU Court of Justice since Monday (13 February).

When journalist Alexander Fanta of the news website netzpolitik.org requested access to these messages, the Commission replied that it had not “identified” them and could no longer find them.

The Commission’s statements led the European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly to file a complaint in January 2022, urging the EU executive to “conduct a more thorough search for relevant messages”.

In response, EU Transparency Commissioner Věra Jourová said the search for text messages between von der Leyen and Bourla “did not yield any results”.

In July 2022, the EU’s Ombudsman severely criticised the Commission and considered the lack of willingness to trace these SMS messages to be a “wake-up call”.

“The handling of this access to documents request leaves the regrettable impression of an EU institution that is not forthcoming on matters of significant public interest,” O’Reilly added at the time.

But for Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas, “nobody can negotiate the complexity of these contracts, by SMS or alone. This was a very well-structured procedure between the member states and the Commission,” he said on 26 October.

For now, the New York Times did not wish to react, Politico reported.

Despite expectations that the Commission would comment on the issue on Tuesday (14 February) afternoon, it only held a short press conference on “strengthening CO2 emission standards for new heavy-duty vehicles” by First Vice President Frans Timmermans, on the sidelines of the European Parliament plenary in Strasbourg.

Pfizer officials could be excluded from the European Parliament

The European Parliament’s COVI committee on Thursday (11 January) approved a proposal to ban Pfizer officials from the European Parliament, following the company’s lack of transparency in vaccine purchase contracts during the pandemic.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]

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