EU chief stonewalls investigators on private texts with Pfizer CEO

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is refusing to cooperate with an investigation of her private text messages with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla through which they negotiated a multi-billion-euro contract for COVID-19 vaccines. 

The European Parliament (EP) began the investigation after von der Leyen acknowledged the text exchange in an April 2021 interview with the New York Times. But the European Commission says it no longer has the texts, and von der Leyen is keeping mum about the details.

“We need to hear what went on, otherwise it’s going to drag on,” European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly said, according to Reuters.

“It’s the gift that keeps on giving to people who are hostile to the EU and who are anti-vax, because it can feed into the narrative that something is being hidden,” she added.

The Conference of Presidents (CoP), a parliamentary body which includes the heads of political groups and Parliament’s president, are demanding answers from von der Leyen for the sake of transparency. However, the CoP agreed to question the EU chief at their next private meeting behind closed doors and out of the public eye.

Bereft of von der Leyen’s cooperation, the EU’s COVID-19 committee (COVI) twice invited Bourla last year to appear before the EP to provide clarification on these issues, but Bourla refused. Instead, he sent Pfizer’s President of International Developed Markets Janine Small, who assured the parliamentarians in October the vaccine contracts were freely available to them, omitting the fact that they were heavily redacted. 

“I think Albert Bourla deliberately did not come, because he did not want to face the controversies,” French MEP and COVI member Véronique Trillet-Lenoir told Euractiv. 

“As Committee Chair, I deeply regret Dr. Bourla’s refusal. The EU has spent a lot of public resources on vaccine production & purchase. The EP has a right to full transparency on the details of this spending and the preliminary negotiations that led to it,” tweeted COVI Chair Kathleen Van Brempt in December. 

In response to Bourla’s refusal, the COVI voted to ban Pfizer representatives from Parliament, which would block the company’s lobbyists — and Bourla himself — from access to lawmakers. The proposal was shot down by the CoP.

According to reports, Pfizer spends between €800,000 ($860,000) and €900,000 ($974,000) annually on its EU lobbying. The company has four lobbyists who work out of Pfizer’s Brussels office and hold permanent European Parliament access passes. 

But Pfizer may be under-declaring its lobbying budget; the corporate giant has also spent between €950,000 ($1,028,000) and €1.2 million ($1.3 million) per year for help from outside lobbying consultancies.