U.S. pharma giant Pfizer—together with its German partner, BioNTech—filed an ongoing lawsuit against Hungary over the country’s refusal to pay for millions of redundant COVID vaccines ordered by the European Union during the pandemic, a document leaked to Politico on December 5th shows.
The lawsuit was filed at a Belgian court in January of this year over the missed payment for 3 million Pfizer vaccine doses, worth around €60 million. The case has not progressed since March, when the judge dismissed Pfizer’s request to fast-track the process.
The lawsuit is similar to one against Poland, where the only major difference involves scale, as Poland turned down 60 million vaccine doses, worth around €1.2 billion. In April 2022, Warsaw invoked force majeure—citing increased financial strain due to the influx of Ukrainian refugees.
In November 2022, Budapest followed suit and informed Pfizer that it did not intend to accept its remaining doses either. Addressing the leaked court document, Hungarian government spokesman Zoltán Kovács said that the Commission is to blame, as it ordered unnecessarily large quantities and forced them onto member states.
For a long time now, EU member states have been accusing Brussels of ordering unnecessary amounts of COVID vaccines—1.8 billion from Pfizer and 4.2 billion or a total of nine doses per person. Additionally, the unusually high price set in the EU-Pfizer deal further fuels the conflict.
Naturally, member states pay the price, not the Commission. EU countries have now had to dump hundreds of millions of expired doses (costing over €5 billion for Germany alone). In Romania, prosecutors call for lifting the immunity of former PM Florin Cîțu along with two former health ministers for agreeing to accept unnecessary vaccine doses and causing €1 billion worth of debt-related damage to the state.
Furthermore, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen still refuses to release her text messages with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in which she negotiated the contract, despite multiple calls for her to do so from European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly. Incidentally, Bourla is also a business partner of von der Leyen’s husband, which makes it even easier for many to suspect ‘Pfizergate’ will be the largest corruption scandal in EU history.
