The European Commission, led by Ursula von der Leyen, has violated EU transparency rules by entering into agreements with pharmaceutical companies on the supply of COVID-19 vaccines. Especially regarding potential conflicts of interest and the rules for possible compensation for manufacturers vaccines (due to image losses in case of failure to meet deadlines) the EC did not provide the public with adequate access to information – said the judges of the General Court of the EU in Luxembourg, a lower court of the Court of Justice of the EU.
These are two complaints about restricting access to EU contracts with pharmaceutical companies for the purchase of vaccines from 2020-21. The EU also did not justify the reasons for restricting access. Everything took place in special conditions: a pandemic, lockdowns and social pressure to provide medicines.
The EC can still appeal this ruling to the CJEU.
COVID-19 Vaccinations: Transparency
In 2020, during the pandemic, the European Commission negotiated and implemented contracts for hundreds of millions of vaccine doses on behalf of member states. Even then, these procedures were controversial because their details were only partially made available to the public and deliveries were delayed.
The case was investigated by the European Public Prosecutor's Office. Two applications for proceedings concerning the EC's restriction of information were filed to the EU court by MEPs European Parliament and private individuals. In 2021, they asked the EC for access to the content of the contracts, which the EC ultimately made available to them only in part.
Ursula von der Leyen in the EC: vote
This unfavourable ruling for von der Leyen was announced a day before a key vote in the European Parliament, which will decide whether she will remain as head of the European Commission for another term. Although the European People's Party, to which the German woman belongs, has new term of office of the largest number of MEPs, the result of the vote is uncertain.
There is one more issue hanging over von der Leyen in the context of vaccinations, even though the EU under her leadership managed to control the chaos relatively quickly at the peak of the pandemic, and this was done thanks to the vaccinations provided by the following companies: AstraZeneca, Sanofi/GSK, Janssen Pharmaceutica/Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer/BioNTech, CureVac and Moderna. The vaccines were developed at a rapid pace thanks to the multi-billion support from public funds and the contracting of purchases in advance (for Poland, the first purchase contracted in advance was about PLN 2.4 billion). First of all, there were huge queues of vaccination doses all over Europe, and the action of the EC and the states – despite doubts at that time – was generally considered a success.
They were overshadowed by the scandal after it was revealed that the head of the European Commission exchanged text messages with the CEO of Pfizer. Ultimately, despite demands from MEPs, their content was not disclosed because they were deleted from her work phone. (DPA/Mar)
The article comes from the website German Welle