Two external rulings this week formally reprimanded European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen for lack of transparency in releasing information to the public regarding negotiations with commercial interests.
This morning, the Court of Justice of the European Union annulled a European Commission decision to conceal certain parts of COVID vaccine contracts. The court found that von der Leyen and her team unfairly blocked details of a purchase agreement with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. According to the Court’s press release:
An action for annulment seeks the annulment of acts of the institutions of the European Union that are contrary to European Union law. … The Member States, the European institutions and individuals may, under certain conditions, bring an action for annulment before the Court of Justice or the General Court. If the action is well founded, the act is annulled.
The ruling on the deal, conducted in 2020 over €2.7 billion worth of COVID vaccines, now means a stressful week for the top Eurocrat could be about to get a whole lot worse as it comes just a day before the vote on von der Leyen’s reappointment as Commission president. The Court ruled that von der Leyen’s team “did not give the public sufficiently wide access to the purchase agreements for COVID-19 vaccines” and clarified that corporate secrecy did not give the Commission the right to withhold details from the public. This adds to the political pressure from MEPs, who have been blocked from accessing the Commission chief’s personal text messages with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during the vaccine procurement.
The Luxembourg-based court then outlined certain “irregularities” in the Commission’s procurement of vaccines from Pfizer, adding that the names of officials involved in the deal should be divulged in order to prevent a conflict of interest. The court’s criticism of von der Leyen and the Commission’s handling of the affair may set the stage for a multitude of cases across the EU as well as further oversight—from the European Parliament (EP) on the workings of the Commission.
This judgement from the EU’s top court is also likely to be used as political ammunition against von der Leyen, who is already facing an uphill battle to secure a majority of MEPs to re-elect her for another five-year term ahead of a crunch vote in Strasbourg on Thursday.
Belgian prosecutors are expected to take up a case against von der Leyen in December, with EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly warning only this week that the alleged collusion between the Commission and Pfizer is a ‘wake-up call’ to EU institutions, prompting further reform.
The so-called Pfizergate story exploded onto the scene in April 2021 when the New York Times was refused access to SMS messages between von der Leyen and top Pfizer executives. At the time, the EU was lambasted around the world for its excruciatingly slow and overly centralised vaccine rollout.
The Ombudsman accused von der Leyen and the Commission of ‘maladministration’ for failing to produce the deleted text messages, challenging the belief that such texts did not qualify as ‘documents’ under EU law.
The second rap on the knuckles this week from the Ombudsman similarly accused the Commission of maladministration for its lack of transparency over the rollout of the ‘ChatControl’ technology, allegedly intended to prevent the dissemination of child pornography, in reality jeopardising privacy of private communications across Europe. The legislation—which in the end was not voted on by the European Council in June—would have meant that all digital correspondence of European citizens would be automatically monitored.
A reporter’s request for details on Commission meetings with the American NGO Thorn—also a key provider of the technology used for the planned surveillance of online communications—was rejected, after the Commission stated the NGO was only providing expertise, not attempting to influence legislation. The Ombudsman said that claim was at odds with the Commission’s own description of the meeting notes, which the institution said “concern business strategy on deployment of Thorn products, as well as Thorn’s views on legislation and regulation.” The Ombudsman’s ‘ChatControl’ opinion states:
the Commission should have disclosed the documents to enable the public to scrutinise how stakeholder input had informed its legislative proposal and to verify that it had acted independently and exclusively in the public interest.
The von der Leyen Commission was last year also accused of violating its own Digital Services Act by using targeted advertising, based on political and religious beliefs, to drum up support for its ChatControl legislation.
Von der Leyen’s handling of the Pfizergate debacle is just one of the multiple reasons cited by conservative MEPs this week for objecting to a second turn for the Christian Democrat turned Eurocrat in the EU’s top job. Her tenure is already mired by disputes over Gaza, Ukraine, and the rule-of-law harassment of EU-critical governments such as Hungary’s.
Von der Leyen is pinning her hopes on an electoral alliance with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her conservative ECR faction ahead of Thursday’s vote in the EP, amid backroom talks by the Italians to achieve concessions on mitigating green policies from Brussels in exchange for votes.
This story has been updated.
