Von der Leyen’s Commission dodges public responsibility over Pfizergate texts

The European Commission would have shared the alleged text messages between its President Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla — if it had found any and considered them important enough, a court heard on Friday.

The question at the heart of the hearing is whether the content was substantive enough that it should have been registered in the Commission’s document management system  — and whether the Commission should therefore have provided journalists access to the texts. 

Presenting its position before a packed EU court in Luxembourg, Europe’s executive is defending itself in the so-called “Pfizergate” case brought by the New York Times and its former Brussels bureau chief Matina Stevis-Gridneff.

The New York Times article, from April 2021 suggested that Bourla and von der Leyen personally communicated over text messages to help close Europe’s biggest Covid 19 vaccine deal. “This was a major deal in very difficult times concerning all the citizens of the European Union,” Stevis-Gridness and the paper’s lawyer Bondine Kloostra told the court.

The American outlet is asking judges at the EU’s lower-tier court, the General Court, to decide whether von der Leyen’s office was wrong to refuse to release text messages she allegedly exchanged with the boss of Covid vaccine-maker Pfizer in early 2021.

At the time, the Commission chief was negotiating a valuable deal to secure up to 1.8 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines from the company. 

So far, judges have questioned the Commission on the existence of the text messages, and whether their content was significant enough to force their release — something which the New York Times said can’t be proven unless they were made public.

A transcription from the Times’ interview with Bourla was read out in the court room by the Times’ lawyer Flip Schüller. “If there is an issue she (von der Leyen) wanted to know, and also I wanted to know if they have any concerns, I wanted to know. So we exchanged text messages, if there was something that we needed to discuss.”

But the Commission wrote in its written arguments that the texts “would have been registered” in its document management system — and therefore available for the public to request access — if they contained “important information” that wasn’t “short-lived,” or if they led to or required any follow-up or action by the Commission or one of its departments. 

The Commission’s lawyer Paolo Stancanelli said that texts concerning “negotiations of vaccine contracts between the president and CEO of Pfizer with substantive content never existed.”

But he added that he “cannot deny” that text messages were exchanged between von der Leyen and Bourla, but since they were “not relevant with substantive content” to the Commission’s policy, the executive “never got hold of the document at any time, so we are not able to tell you until when they existed, or if they still exist.” 

The case continues. 

This story is being updated.