Ursula von der Leyen: Sje is finally moving out her SMS?

“Where are Ursula’s SMS von der Leyen?” The question was haunted by the Bundestag when the CDU politician was still a defense minister. The question has been concerned with the European institutions since she has been the commission president. The CDU politician does not have it with the transparency, which has been known for a long time.

She does not ask her critical questions. And if she gives interviews at all, everything is precisely choreographed. Nothing should penetrate to the outside, everything is checked. It is not surprising that journalists immediately prepare for the Commission to wall when they inquire about important documents from the Commission.

So it was the “New York Times”,, When she asked for the SMS who replaced the commission president during the covid pandemic with Pfizer boss Albert Bourla. It was about a billion -dollar deal, the biggest order that the Commission ever awarded: the Commission ordered 1.8 billion vaccines from the pharmaceutical Pfizer. To date, the exact costs are not known, only as much: it is mentioned of at least 35 billion euros, a large part of the vaccine sockets ultimately ended up in the trash. Expired.

Hardly anyone knows the details of the deal. Probably also because the Commission President apparently negotiated it using text messages. In any case, the Pfizer boss Bourla of the “But this news did not want to move out of the Leyen. The journalists therefore sued the EU’s court, today the judgment was made: The judges’ lawsuit” New York Times “instead of. The EU Commission must not have the documents under closure.

The decision is trend -setting. It provides information about what the Commission has to classify as official documents. Text messages, the Commission argued, were at short notice that the Commission would therefore not have to archive it. And only what is archived can ultimately be made accessible to the public. According to the court, text messages are very suitable.

This makes the judgment a profit for more transparency, journalists could make work easier. Could. If the Commission does not contest the judgment.

But that is exactly what is to be expected. The negotiation before the EU Court in November was a lesson about how the Commission closes any transparency. Not even their lawyer could tell the judges whether the text messages between Ursula von der Leyen and Albert Bourla exist or not. He had to take part in partly too curious arguments, which is why, as it is in the judgment, the Commission has lost in court. He said: If there were news with important information, they would have been archived. But the Commission could not find any news among Ursula von der Leyen’s archived documents. So they didn’t exist. Or their content was not relevant.

The commission’s lawyer could not even answer the judges which platform the news was exchanged. He simply didn’t know it himself. Not where the SMS are, not something in it, not even whether they still exist. The head of the commission, it seemed, did not even trust the lawyers of the institution, who chairs them.

The SMS has probably long since been deleted. The Leyen has not used the telephone at that time for a long time, and the president’s service cell phones are replaced regularly. And with SMS and from the Leyen, the alarm bells should ring anyway. Already in the affair about highly endowed consultant contracts, which Ursula von der Leyen – then Defense Minister – is said to have illegally awarded, should text messages be secured as evidence. But all SMS on the Leyen’s cell phones were irrevocably deleted.

Anyone who asked the Commission in question after today’s judgment will be disappointed at the Commission. Ursula von der Leyen and her commission cannot be transformed into a transparent institution, probably not by the EU’s court. A little transparency would probably not be wrong, especially in times when head of state like Trump disassembled democracy. But the commission does the opposite. It was only in December that she adapted Klamm and secretly her rules of procedure and limited again which documents can get to the public.

With the judgment of the EU Court, the Leyens facade may have a small crack. But that it reveals the disappeared SMS to light is probably wishful thinking.