Von der Leyen faces a serious test: Did the European Commission violate transparency rules in the Pfizer purchase?
Ursula von der Leyen’s legacy as European Commission president will face a huge challenge this week when the EU court rules on secret text messages she exchanged with the boss of a drug company that agreed a multibillion-euro vaccine deal with Brussels, Politico writes.
The Court of Justice of the EU will decide whether by refusing to release the contents of her text conversation with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla the Commission breached transparency rules.
Not only will Wednesday’s “Pfizergate” decision in the lower-tier General Court have sweeping implications for how the bloc’s top officials conduct business behind closed doors, it could also cast a shadow over von der Leyen’s second five-year term at the helm, which only started on Dec. 1.
As she battles to keep the Commission relevant amid nationalist rhetoric growing around the bloc, she has already attracted criticism for her tendency to centralize power and for rowing back on green-friendly commitments.
The case is legally tricky for von der Leyen because she not only personally signed off on the bloc’s largest vaccine contract — worth billions of euros — she also presides over the very institution tasked with enforcing EU law, which includes principles of transparency and accountability. If the court rules against her, it would provide political ammunition to a wide range of critics.
It would also be a major embarrassment given it’s just a few months after she publicly pledged to defend standards of transparency, efficiency and probity in her second term.
The case was instigated by The New York Times and its former Brussels bureau chief, which brought an action against the Commission’s decision not to release the text messages in 2022.
The existence of the messages was revealed in April 2021. This agreement, finalized in May 2021, involved the EU committing to purchase up to 1.8 billion doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, the largest by far of all the deals signed by Brussels.
It foresaw the up-front purchase of 900 million doses, with the option to order 900 million more, for delivery in 2022 and 2023.
In a statement to Politico, the Commission said that it “does not comment on ongoing legal procedures.”
The pressure on von der Leyen is mounting. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office, tasked with investigating serious financial crimes against the EU’s financial interests, confirmed that it has been investigating the Commission on its handling of the vaccine procurements.
