Covid vaccine, the New York Times sues von der Leyen

After investigations, he will end up in court. The New York Times decided to take the European Commission to the judicial authority for not making public the exchange of messages between the president, Ursula von der Leyen, and the CEO of Pfizer Albert Bourla, about the negotiations that led to the purchase of vaccine doses for Covid. The newspaper argues that the Commission had an obligation to make the messages public, in the name of transparency, because they could contain useful information related to the procurement of billions of dollars worth of vaccine doses. The news was relaunched by Politico, with the New York Times limiting itself to issuing a press release, avoiding further comments: “We have submitted – it reads – many requests for access to documents of public interest. We cannot comment this time on the core issue of the case.” The European Commission did not comment.

The action follows an investigative line that began in January 2022, when it was found that the Commission had not complied with the request of journalist Alexander Fanta, from netzpolitik.org, a German website specializing in digital rights, who had asked to be able to read the exchange of messages between von der Leyen and the CEO of Pfizer. European Union Transparency Commissioner Vera Jourovà responded that the messages could have been deleted due to their “ephemeral nature”. The answer was not considered satisfactory. The German newspaper Bild had submitted a similar request for access to documents, but linked to the negotiations that led to the purchase by the European Union of vaccines produced by Pfizer / BioNTech and AstraZeneca. The documents that Bild had access to did not contain the exchange of emails between the president of the European Commission and the CEO of Pfizer. The EU Ombudsman also spoke about the case, asking for transparency from the Commission and several MPs.