During the pandemic, the agency made billion-dollar deals for vaccine doses, but kept some of them secret. A court has now dealt Ursula von der Leyen a defeat.
According to a ruling by the EU Court, Ursula von der Leyen’s EU Commission violated EU law by keeping secret information on corona vaccine contracts worth billions. The Brussels authority did not grant sufficient access to documents, particularly with regard to possible conflicts of interest and compensation rules for vaccine manufacturers, the judges in Luxembourg decided. The ruling can be appealed before the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
During the pandemic, the EU Commission negotiated and concluded contracts for hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine with pharmaceutical companies on behalf of the member states in 2020 and 2021. The procedure was repeatedly criticized because the contracts were only partially made public or because there were delays in the delivery of the vaccine. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office, among others, is investigating this matter.
In 2021, MEPs and private individuals applied for access to the contracts. However, the EU Commission, headed by the German CDU politician von der Leyen, only partially granted them. Therefore, parliamentarians and private individuals filed a lawsuit and have now been partially successful. The ruling comes one day before the European Parliament votes on a second term for Ursula von der Leyen as Commission President.
The court found that the EU Commission had not adequately justified why extensive access to the clauses on compensation rules would harm the companies’ business interests. The EU Commission had also refused access to the documents, citing the protection of individuals’ privacy. However, the plaintiffs had properly demonstrated the specific purpose of the public interest in publishing the data: it was only possible to verify that there was no conflict of interest if the names and professional roles of the people involved in the contracts were available.
After the ruling, the EU Commission pointed out that it had been largely right. The court’s criticism related in particular to the pharmaceutical industry’s interests in confidentiality, which the Commission could not ignore without fearing damage as a negotiating partner.
Source: Stern
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