EU queen Ursula faces public rebuke

(MENAFN) Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, has faced a public rebuke after the EU’s top court ruled that she failed to uphold her own transparency standards. This comes after it was revealed that during her tenure, von der Leyen had engaged in private, backdoor communications with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla concerning a massive Covid vaccine deal. Despite her public speeches advocating for transparency in the EU, the Commission’s failure to disclose these private messages has raised serious questions.

In 2023, von der Leyen emphasized the importance of transparency in her State of the European Union address, claiming that transparency should be the cornerstone of the EU’s work. Her calls for openness were echoed in 2019, when she urged other Commission members to be more transparent. However, her actions regarding the Pfizer deal tell a different story.

The controversy began when the New York Times reported in April 2021 about von der Leyen’s "personal diplomacy" with Pfizer, which played a key role in securing a deal for 1.8 billion doses of the Covid vaccine. The article highlighted von der Leyen’s frequent texts and calls with Bourla, but when the Times requested to see these messages, the Commission claimed the texts had disappeared. This response prompted the Times to take legal action, and the European Court of Justice ruled that von der Leyen and her team could not simply dismiss the request without offering a reasonable explanation.

The court determined that the Commission had failed to explain why these communications were not preserved and stated that there needed to be a plausible justification for the messages' disappearance. This ruling highlights the growing concerns over the Commission's transparency practices and its handling of sensitive public matters.

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