Dispute over the content of important information: court orders head of the European Commission to show correspondence with Pfizer about vaccine procurement

The Court of Justice of the European Union has granted The New York Times' request regarding the refusal to publish the SMS correspondence between the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the management of Pfizer regarding the supply of the COVID-19 vaccine to the European Union.

This is stated in the court's decision CJEU, reports UNN.

Details

It is noted that according to the law, the European Union (EU) is obliged to provide the right to public access to documents stored in its institutions.

The court ruled that the EC "failed to provide a plausible explanation" as to why it considered that these text messages did not contain important information. The court concluded that the NYT provided evidence describing the existence of correspondence between the head of the EC and the CEO of Pfizer "in the context of the EC's purchase of vaccines from this company during the COVID-19 pandemic."

According to the court, the plaintiff also managed to "rebut the presumption of non-existence and absence of the requested documents."

The Commission cannot simply state that it does not have the requested documents, but must provide credible explanations that allow the public and the court to understand why these documents cannot be found. The Commission has not provided a plausible explanation that justifies the absence of the documents. Moreover, the EC did not specify whether the requested text messages were deleted, and if so, intentionally or automatically.

 Let us remind you

In 2021, The New York Times reported that the head of the EC had been corresponding with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla for about a month regarding the supply of 1.8 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. The contract became the world's largest vaccine supply agreement, Reuters noted. The New York Times filed a lawsuit in late January 2023, claiming that Ms. von der Leyen unreasonably refused to publish her SMS messages.

UNN reported that China called on the United States to immediately stop "unfounded accusations" regarding the origin of SARS-CoV-2.

Repeated attempts by the United States to accuse and denigrate China on the issue of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 only expose its malicious intent to politicize scientific issues, the Global Times, a tabloid controlled by the Communist Party of China, said.