LUXEMBOURG – A top court is to rule Wednesday on whether the EU failed the transparency test by declining to release text messages sent by Ursula von der Leyen to the head of Pfizer as the bloc tried to secure COVID vaccines.
The case before the Court of Justice of the European Union is seen as a test for the EU Commission president, whose governance has at times been accused of centralized and opaque decision-making.
At its center are elusive exchanges between von der Leyen and Albert Bourla, chief executive of Pfizer — which was chosen by the bloc as its main vaccine supplier at the height of the pandemic.
The New York Times, which revealed the existence of the messages, sued the commission in 2023 after Brussels declined to produce them following a freedom of information request.
The commission argued it could not find the texts because they had not been recorded and archived — something it says is done only when the content is deemed “substantive.”
“The commission never denied the existence of text message exchanges,” an EU official said. “What it was argued… is that these exchanges did not contain important information”.
The New York Times has asked the lower chamber of the Luxembourg-based EUCJ to quash the commission’s decision not to hand it the messages. The verdict can be appealed.
The EU moved swiftly after the Covid pandemic emerged in 2020 to secure vaccines for member countries to buy for their citizens and residents at a time of massive global demand for the shots.
