EU scandal alarm: from the Leyen's secret Pfizer chats that are exposed by court decision -novinite.com

The European The general court of the union has fulfilled a significant blow European Commission that decides that it was wrong to refuse the publication of text messages that were exchanged between the President of the Commission Ursula From the Leyen And Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during critical Covid 19 vaccine negotiations. The court found that the Commission had not rejected a credible declaration to reject access to communication when a journalist requested it in 2021.

The text messages in question, the content of which is not known, come from a period of time when Pfizer Secured contracts worth billion euros, including an agreement for 1.8 billion additional vaccine doses. Despite its potential importance for understanding the vaccination procurement process, the Commission claimed that it did not have the news or did not regard it as official documents that require archiving.

Transparency International welcomed the court's decision as one “Landlike victory for transparency in the EU,The Commission asked the task of its restrictive attitude towards freedom of information. The organization's EU management policy, Sharia Hinds, emphasized that the decision is more than just transparency – it is a critical memory of the institutional accountability that the Commission apparently neglected.

The Commission is now on a crossroads, with the court demanding a clear explanation for the obvious disappearance of the messages. If the exchange of text has been deleted, the Commission must explain whether this is intentionally or a result of the routine mobile phone device, such as From the Leyen According to reports, your device has changed since the journalist's request.

The origins of the case follow for an article in the New York Times 2021, in which journalist Matina Stevis-Gridneff unveiled From the Leyen Had communicated directly to Bourla while negotiating vaccination supply. This revelation prompted German investigative journalists Alexander Fanta to submit a freedom of information to search for access to these messages.

However, the Commission rejected the request and argued that SMS messages were not taken into account.public documentsAnd was not archived as such. The dispute deepened when the European The ombudsman intervened and came to the conclusion that the commission's refusal to search for the news was the disapproved administration. The New York Times then took the Commission to court, which led to the judgment on Wednesday.

For From the LeyenThe judgment has a shadow on its presidency, which began in 2019 and was extended for a second term last year. Critics say Pfizer Contract – The largest procurement contract in the EU history.

The court's court envelope also provides a sharp warning to EU institutions in relation to transparency obligations. Vincent Couronne, A European The legal researcher pointed out that the court has now determined a precedent that text messages can be viewed as public documents if they affect the official business. This could cause a reassessment to how EU officials deal with mobile communications in the future.

The Commission now has two months to decide whether to make an appeal against the decision or comply with the court's directive in order to provide a more detailed explanation on the lack of news. In its first response to the decision, the Commission signaled its intention to rethink the original request for access, but no longer had to be obliged to disclose it.

Meanwhile the European The public prosecutor carries out a separate criminal investigation of the procurement of vaccines and increases the possibility that investigators could try to access telecommunications data or app servers in order to access the relevant messages.

The fate of From the LeyenThe texts are still uncertain, but the judgment of the court has set a new scale of transparency within the EU institutions and sent a clear message that digital communication, as fleeting, cannot be checked.