Covid: Commission rejects allegations of non-transparency over message exchanges with Pfizer

Brussels – Moderna, AstraZeneca, Novavax, and, most importantly, Pfizer: all anti-Covid vaccines and purchase agreements are legal cases that the European Commission intends to defuse. An EU Court of Justice ruling is expected Wednesday (May 14) on the alleged violation of transparency rules over the lack of access to text messages exchanged over the phone between EU executive president Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla between May 1, 2021 and May 11, 2022. Accusations that Brussels has always rejected and is doing so once again on the eve of a ruling that nonetheless produces apprehension and discontent.

The discontent stems from the criticism referred to an “unprecedented situation,” not only concerning a health crisis for which virtually no one in the EU was ready but also for contracts that had to be written from scratch. While in the US, at the time of the Coronavirus pandemic, there was already legislation in place whereby the federal government could order priority production from industries for the government, “we did not have this kind of legislation,” they recall. “For the EU, these kinds of Covid contracts are an unprecedented situation that had to be written for the occasion.”

Regarding the contracts, the Commission and its president von der Leyen started betting on Pfizer’s vaccines in November 2020, but they had moved ahead by sealing advance purchase agreements. By the end of November, there were understandings with five pharmaceutical companies. In the last days of December, the European vaccination campaign kicked off after the green light to also use Pfzier vials.

In January 2021, there was an agreement to purchase a further 300 million Pfizer doses, plus an additional 100 million in April. A few days later came the announcement of another contract. There are so many doses and so much money at stake. The New York Times asks to see the correspondence between the key players in this story, the Commission president and Pfizer CEO, but access is denied because text messages are unavailable.

The Commission does not deny the exchange of text messages but explains that they have been ‘downgraded’ to acts of no importance. Only documents with relevant content are saved and archived, and this would not be the case. “The messaging was only to speed up communication,” they explain in Brussels. They were not a political tool or useful for policy and contract making. With the Commission charged with acting on behalf of the 27 member states and reporting, the additional communication channel was considered informal but functional in dealing with a never-before-seen situation. Still, nothing sensitive would have passed through the von der Leyen’s personal phone, so it was not archived.

So, the European Commission is already presenting its side of the story, as it did to the judges in Luxembourg for the case whose ruling is coming. Transparency is not in question, and Brussels’ defense is that all signed contracts have been made public and are viewable on the Commission’s portal. It makes clear that the issue concerns a specific request of text messages that have ‘disappeared’ and, therefore, even if they wanted to, cannot be disclosed due to the irrelevant nature of their content.

Should the court uphold the prosecution’s case, the Commission would have two options: appeal or reassess its request for access to the requested documentation in light of the ruling. It’s too bad the text messages might not be there anyway. “It is not von der Leyen who decides what to keep or not to keep,” they say in Brussels. “There is a person in charge of handling the messages who felt they should not be saved.” It would also make it impossible to comply with any ruling against von der Leyen.