The European Commission was wrong to conceal details of its multi-billion euro deals for Covid vaccines, an EU court has ruled in a blow to Ursula von der Leyen.
Mrs von der Leyen faces a European Parliament vote on Thursday to secure her appointment for a second term as president of the EU executive but the court decision risks reawakening concerns over how she secured jabs for the bloc.
She was already under scrutiny for allegedly keeping secret and deleting text messages with the boss of Pfizer over vaccine purchases in a controversy dubbed “Deletegate”.
Wednesday’s court ruling is separate to that case but the timing is embarrassing for Mrs von der Leyen, who will miss Thursday’s European Political Community summit in the UK to be at the Strasbourg vote, and is currently working to ensure she has the expected support for another five years at the head of the commission.
Green MEPs had demanded the commission publish Covid vaccine purchase agreements worth just under £2.3 billion that it negotiated in 2020-2021.
Brussels did publish the deals but redacted parts of the agreements, including the names of EU officials responsible for negotiating them. It argued that releasing the blacked-out details would jeopardise the commercial relationships with the pharmaceutical companies, notably where it came to liability and indemnification in the event of vaccine defects.
The commission also argued that it needed to keep private the identities and words used by members of its team who negotiated the deals.
A legal battle ensued, leading to Wednesday’s ruling.
Commission failed ‘public interest’ test by keeping names secret
The EU’s General Court said the commission failed to show how divulging indemnification details would harm the commercial interests of the pharmaceutical groups supplying the vaccines,
It also failed a “public interest” test by keeping secret the names of the EU officials involved, the court said.
The court upheld “in part” the lawsuits lodged by those seeking access to those details “and annuls the Commission’s decisions in so far as they contain irregularities”.
“The Commission did not demonstrate that wider access to those clauses would actually undermine the commercial interests of those undertakings,” the court said.
It also found that those behind the lawsuit had demonstrated the public interest of having access to the personal details of the commission’s vaccine-negotiating team.
“It was only by having the names, surnames and details of the professional or institutional role of the members of the team in question that they could have ascertained whether or not the members of that team had a conflict of interests,” the court added.
Commission previously criticised by watchdog
The commission has until late September to lodge an appeal before the European Court of Justice if it wants to challenge the ruling of the General Court.
The commission said it would “carefully study” the court decision.
The ruling “only partially upheld the legal action on two points” and the court “follows the Commission on many claims,” it said.
It argued that it “needed to strike a difficult balance between the right of the public… to information, and the legal requirements emanating from the Covid-19 contracts themselves, which could result in claims for damages at the cost of taxpayers’ money”.
“At this stage, the Commission reserves its legal options,” it said.
In 2022, the commission said it could not and did not have to find the text messages Mrs von der Leyen exchanged with Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chief executive, during the pandemic.
The existence of the messages was revealed in a New York Times investigation.
The commission refused a freedom of information request for the messages, which led to a complaint to the European Ombudsman.
In a damning report, the watchdog said that amounted to maladministration.