The texts exchanged between the president of the commission and the boss of Pfizer about vaccines could not be found. The mediator claims that this type of exchange be considered in the future as “EU documents”.
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The messages exchanged by the president of the European Commission with Albert Bourla, the director general of the Pharmaceutical Society Pfizer, are decidedly the sparadrap which, like that of Captain Haddock in the Tournesol case, glue tenaciously on the finger of Ursula von der Leyen. These texts are now the subject of a quarrel between the Commission and the Union mediator, Emily O’Reilly.
The director of this body – also known as Ombudsman -, based in Strasbourg and responsible for investigating possible problematic acts within the European Union, had been seized of a complaint by a German journalist from the Netzpolitik site , eager to know more about the content of the texts in question. He had been denied access to the content of these messages by the Commission.
At the end of January, the mediator had proven the Brussels executive wrong, judging that these SMS entered the legislation on the access of the public and the media to the official documents and that they directly concerned work of the institution. M o’reilly asked the committee to re -examine the messages in question before the end of April, which however assumed that they were kept. The services of M von der Leyen promised an answer, even if they were not obliged to provide it. >
The mediator deplored, in a final statement published Thursday, July 14, that the Commission did not, in fact, still not clarify the situation. She also judged that this affair was to serve as “alarm clock” for all European institutions, required to assume their responsibilities in the field of transparency. The recent indications provided by the Commission did not allow us to conclude that the exchanges between M me von der Leyen and Mr. Bourla were well examined. In fact, they would not have been preserved. The executive would have recognized, however, that texts were indeed documents relating to union policies.
M me o’reilly, she concluded that a case of “administrative mismanagement”. It also regrets not having received details as to the response which would be given to future any requests for obtaining such documents. Evoking the recent revelations on Uber’s lobbying activities, the mediator evokes “the urgency” that the activities of the European administrations are carried out in transparency. She has matched her conclusions of recommendations: to have all exchanges of electronic messages recognized such as “EU documents”, to set up techniques for recording and storage of this data, respond to all requests for consultation by the public, etc. .
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