By Foo Yun Chee and Sudip Kar-Gupta
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The European Commission did not provide credible reasons for rejecting a New York Times request to hand over text messages between its president and Pfizer’s CEO related to COVID-19 vaccine contracts, a court ruled on Wednesday.
Some EU lawmakers have criticised the Commission’s handling of the deals signed the height of the pandemic, while good governance activists accuse the EU’s executive body of a lack of transparency that could undermine trust in Europe’s institutions.
The New York Times had requested access to text messages from Jan. 1, 2021 to May 11, 2022 between Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s and Pfizer’s Albert Bourla in an effort to shed light on the multi-billion-euro vaccine deal.
The Commission rejected the request, saying von der Leyen had not kept them. It also said the messages did not qualify as EU documents eligible for freedom of information requests under transparency rules.
Ruling on a challenge brought by the newspaper, the Luxembourg-based General Court – Europe’s second-highest court – annulled that decision and said the Commission had not given a plausible explanation to justify not handing them over.
“The Commission has not explained in detail the type of searches that it carried out to find those documents or the identity of the places where those searches took place,” it wrote in its ruling.
The New York Times applauded the ruling.
“Today’s decision is a victory for transparency and accountability in the European Union, and it sends a powerful message that ephemeral communications are not beyond the reach of public scrutiny,” it said in a statement.
The European Commission said it would “closely study the General Court’s decision” before deciding on its next steps.
“To this effect, the Commission will adopt a new decision providing a more detailed explanation,” it said.
Pfizer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The European Commission signed a contract with Pfizer and BioNTech to buy up to 1.8 billion doses of their vaccines in May 2021.
A challenge by EU lawmakers for access to the contracts was upheld by the General Court last year.
Wednesday’s ruling was related to case T-36/23 – Stevi and The New York Times v Commission.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Benoit Van Overstraeten and Joe Bavier)
