The European Commission must provide more transparency on vaccine contracts by the EU judge

The European Commission must disclose more details about the contracts it has concluded with pharmaceutical companies to buy COVID-19 vaccines. The European Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday that the commission “has not given the public sufficient access to the purchase agreements for COVID-19 vaccines.”

The statement is stinging – it feeds into existing criticism that Brussels has not been sufficiently transparent about its procurement of Covid-19 vaccines. The accusation particularly affects Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who is hoping to be re-elected by the European Parliament on Thursday. Von der Leyen has been dogged for some time by another lawsuit, in which she is accused of not wanting to publicly exchange important text messages with the head of pharmaceutical company Pfizer.

The case, which the European Union’s second-highest court, the General Court, ruled on Wednesday, was initiated in 2021 by a group of MEPs. At the time, the commission rushed to conclude contracts with producers of promising coronavirus vaccines, an unprecedented undertaking. But questions quickly arose about the fine print of the contracts — in part because countries elsewhere in the world received faster shipments and may also be paying more or less.

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Although the Commission at the time made partial access to vaccine contracts available on request, some important parts of them were illegible. The Commission also refused to disclose details of the exact amount it paid for the billions of doses, as well as any conflicts of interest of the team that negotiated the contracts. The argument was that commercial interests and privacy considerations would make full disclosure impossible.

That argument The European Court now partly points to this. According to the General Court, the Commission “has not demonstrated that the extension of access (…) would actually harm the commercial interests of those institutions.” The judge also found that the Commission had not provided sufficient insight into the potential conflicts of interest of the negotiators, while “the disclosure of the personal data of those members serves a specific purpose in the public interest.”

The ruling is a huge blow for von der Leyen, who seems to have little love for transparency. Two years ago, the European Ombudsman accused von der Leyen of “mismanagement” for blocking text messages related to vaccine contracts. The chances that it will actually affect von der Leyen’s re-election on Thursday are slim. But criticism of her aloof and opaque leadership will not diminish.

In response, the Commission said on Wednesday it would study the ruling and pointed to the “difficult balance” between “the public’s right to information” and the agreements made in vaccine contracts, which “may lead to claims for damages at the expense of taxpayers.” The Commission also proposes to appeal.