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The European Commission unlawfully concealed details of its Covid-19 vaccine procurement contracts, the EU’s general court has ruled, dealing a blow to president Ursula von der Leyen’s bid to secure a second term.
Von der Leyen, who faces a crunch European parliament vote on Thursday, has regularly cited her pandemic response as one of her commission’s most important actions in her first term, including the decision to execute joint purchases of billions of euros of Covid-19 vaccines for EU member states.
But judges found the commission erred in redacting parts of the purchasing deals when it finally published them in 2022 after pressure from MEPs and the public. The court said that information should now be disclosed, including the conflicts of interest declarations by the officials involved in paying €2.7bn for more than 1bn doses in 2020 and 2021.
The court case was brought by Green MEPs whose votes von der Leyen will almost certainly need to amass the 361 votes required in the 720-strong assembly.
“Those who have doubts will only have them confirmed in the court ruling,” said a senior staffer from one of the parliamentary groups. “As we’ve always said, it’s going to be close.”
The [salient] contracts were struck with seven vaccine makers including Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna as the bloc raced to buy up doses in the middle of the pandemic.
Von der Leyen is involved in a separate legal case with the New York Times after refusing to disclose text messages she exchanged with the Pfizer chief executive Albert Bourla during the negotiations for doses.
In its ruling, the General Court also said the commission should publish details of payment guarantees for manufacturers in the event vaccines were not effective.
Kim van Sparrentak, one of the Green MEPs who filed the case, said the “significant” ruling confirmed the importance of transparency as the commission expands joint procurement in areas such as health and defence. “The new commission must now adapt their handling of access to documents requests to be in line with today’s ruling,” she said.
The commission said it would “carefully study the court’s judgments and their implications”. It can appeal to the European Court of Justice.
Referring to the decision on disclosures, the commission argued that it “needed to strike a difficult balance between the right of the public . . . to information and the legal requirements emanating from the Covid-19 contracts themselves, which could result in claims for damages at the cost of taxpayers’ money”.
But the court found that “the commission did not demonstrate that wider access to those [indemnity] clauses would actually undermine the commercial interests of those undertakings”.
Similarly, the court found it had not explained why “access to the agreements’ provisions on donations and resales of the vaccines could actually and specifically undermine those commercial interests”.
It has also rejected the commission argument that providing the personal information about the negotiation teams, composed of member state representatives and commission officials, would have breached their privacy.
“It was only by having the names, surnames and details of the professional or institutional role of the members of the team in question that they could have ascertained whether or not the members of that team had a conflict of interests,” the court said.
Additional reporting by Alice Hancock in Brussels