Court Orders Release of Ursula von der Leyen’s Text Messages with Pfizer CEO

Ursula von der Leyen's text messages with Pfizer's CEO Albert Bourla are at the center of a pivotal ruling by the EU’s General Court, which declared that the European Commission incorrectly denied a request for their release. The messages are particularly significant as they relate to negotiations of Covid-19 vaccines, in which the Commission secured substantial contracts worth billions, including an agreement for 1.8 billion additional doses. The court emphasized that the Commission failed to provide a credible justification for withholding the correspondence when requested by an investigative journalist in 2021, highlighting a troubling lack of transparency amid the ongoing scrutiny of the vaccine procurement process.The ruling has prompted praise from anti-corruption advocates like Transparency International, who called it a "landmark victory for transparency in the EU." Their statement underscored the need to shift away from a restrictive approach to public information access. Ursula von der Leyen, who has been at the helm of the Commission since 2019 and was re-elected for a second term last year, now faces reputational challenges due to the opacity surrounding vaccine negotiations, which she directly influenced.The situation drew initial attention in April 2021 when a New York Times piece by Matina Stevis revealed the private negotiations between von der Leyen and Bourla, which were conducted after BioNTech's vaccine received regulatory approval. News of the negotiations prompted another journalist, Alexander Fanta, to file a Freedom of Information request to uncover the texts exchanged between January 2021 and May 2022—this request was initially rejected by the Commission, which falsely claimed to lack the documents.Under existing transparency regulations, all communication, including that of the Commission president, is required to be documented, yet the treatment of SMS as potentially non-public records has allowed for ambiguity. Following a failed inquiry into the Commission's record-keeping practices, Fanta escalated the matter to the European Ombudsman, resulting in findings of maladministration. Ultimately, the General Court has ruled that the Commission's justifications for not releasing the text messages were based largely on unfounded assumptions and flawed reasoning. The court mandated that the responsibility fell upon the Commission to clarify the status of the text messages, including whether they had been deleted or potentially lost if von der Leyen had changed her device.