EU Court rules against European Commission over undisclosed Pfizer vaccine contract texts

In May 2022, The New York Times filed a lawsuit challenging the Commission's refusal to publish text messages exchanged between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. The Commission responded in November, saying the messages had been deleted, prompting a legal review of handling of these communications.

The court ruled that the Commission had wrongfully denied access to the requested text messages, criticizing its vague and inconsistent explanations. It also found evidence demonstrating the existence of exchanges related to the €35 billion COVID-19 vaccine deal.

“Consequently, it must be held that the Commission did not provide in the contested decision any plausible explanation as to why it had not been able to find the requested documents. The explanations provided by the Commission in response to the questions put in the context of a measure of organisation of procedure and reiterated during the hearing – assuming that they are relevant to the assessment of the legality of the contested decision – do not satisfy what is required, either, since they do not make it possible to know what has actually become of the requested documents,” the ruling reads.

The Court emphasized that the Commission failed to explain its search process or clarify whether the messages had been deleted and why, concluding that it had breached its obligation to uphold public access to important documents.

“The presumption of non-existence of the requested documents having been rebutted, it was for the Commission, as is apparent from paragraph 40 above, to provide a plausible explanation as to why it had been unable to find the requested documents, which were said to have existed in the past but no longer existed on the date of the request for access to the documents, or, at the very least, could not be found. As essentially follows from the foregoing examination, however, the Commission merely stated that it did not hold the requested documents. In those circumstances, it is appropriate to conclude that the Commission failed to fulfil its obligations when processing the application for access to documents, as recalled in paragraph 59 above, and thus breached the principle of good administration laid down in Article 41 of the Charter,” it states.

Last July, the European Court of Justice already overturned the European Commission's decision to conceal parts of contracts for the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines. The court found that the EU executive had failed to provide sufficient access to the contracts and had violated transparency by publishing only redacted versions of the contracts.