New York Times Takes European Commission to Court Over Covid Vaccine Deal
The New York Times laid out its arguments on Friday in a lawsuit against the European Commission for the release of text messages exchanged between the European Union’s top official and Pfizer’s chief executive as they negotiated a multibillion-euro Covid-19 vaccine deal.At the heart of the case is whether the text messages qualify as documents subject to transparency laws.It could set a legal precedent on what is considered an official document in the European Union.“Transparency and public access to government documents play a vital role in democratic oversight,” Bondine Kloostra, a lawyer for The Times, said in her opening argument.
“This case presents a very important issue: whether officials may evade public transparency by communicating via text messages rather than more traditional means.”The Times sued the European Commission last year as part of a freedom of information request that sought access to text messages between Ursula von der Leyen, the Commission’s president, who led the European Union’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, and the chief executive of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, as they negotiated a deal for Covid vaccines.The European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, said in 2022 that it could not find the relevant text messages.It also said that text messages did not need to be registered and stored, because they were treated as “ephemeral” documents.
The Commission has not said whether it searched Ms.von der Leyen’s phone for the messages.Paolo Stancanelli, a lawyer representing the European Commission, said in his opening argument on Friday that if substantive text messages between Ms.
von der Leyen and Mr.Bourla had existed, they would have been registered as documents.
He said that Ms.von der Leyen and Dr.
Bourla did not negotiate the Covid vaccine contract by text.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we...