Ursula von der Leyen will likely be questioned by EU parliamentary officials behind closed doors for her role in the EU’s vaccine procurement deal, anonymous sources close to the EP administration have just revealed to The European Conservative. Many MEPs had been calling for a transparent investigation of the Commission president’s actions, but it appears they will not get their way.
The EU Parliament’s COVID-19 Committee voted last month to invite von der Leyen to publicly answer questions from the panel. By procedure, the invitation was forwarded for a decision to the president of the parliament, Roberta Metsola.
Instead, the Conference of Presidents—the EU Parliament’s political leaders—have just now, at their meeting with Metsola, decided to simply hold ‘an exchange of views’ with Ursula von der Leyen in a private session.
Sources also confirmed that at the Conference, only representatives of the ECR and ID Groups protested against the decision, on the grounds that the inquiry should be held openly and include more MEPs—which a questioning in front of the COVID committee would have done.
This comes as the European Commission is being taken to court by the New York Times for failing to release the text messages between President von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. Additionally, French and Italian media have pointed out that her husband Heiko von der Leyen was a scientific director at Orgenesis, a Pfizer subsidiary, which received some €320 million in funds from the Italian government, raising suspicions that the agreement between the Commission president and Pfizer may have been self-serving.
Calls for transparency in the EU institutions are only growing louder in the wake of Qatargate. As such, this new decision for in camera questioning will deal significant damage to the credibility of the EU Parliament and the EU as a whole.
COVID-19 Committee chair, Socialist MEP Kathleen Van Brempt, insisted a clear accounting be made of EU expenses:
The European Union has spent a lot of public resources on the production and purchase of vaccines during the pandemic, the Parliament has the right to obtain full transparency on the modalities of these expenditures and the preliminary negotiations leading up to them.
Another active member of the committee, Cristian Tehreș, a Romanian MEP with the ECR Group, called into question von der Leyen’s integrity:
The mandate of Ursula von der Leyen as president of the European Commission is a complete failure. Her refusal to disclose the contracts, as well as her back door deals, to not come and answer questions from MEPs in an open session proves that she is totally unfit for the job. She has to come into the Parliament and answer questions in a public session in the COVID Committee not because we say so, but because it is the right thing to do.
In short, if there is nothing to hide, why is von der Leyen hiding?
