EU moves to ban Pfizer lobbyists from European Parliament

The European Union (EU) last week approved a proposal to restrict Pfizer’s access to the European Parliament (EP) over the pharma giant’s “lack of transparency”. 

Earlier in the pandemic, the EU sought contracts with several pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer/BioNTech, to purchase COVID-19 vaccines in bulk for distribution to member states. Over the last several months, Parliament requested a copy of Pfizer’s contract in order to examine the exact details and conditions involved in the multi-billion-euro vaccine purchase. But Pfizer’s contract remains heavily redacted, blocking out key details. 

Parliament has also been seeking clarity surrounding an exchange of text messages between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during which the two personally negotiated the contract, according to The European Conservative. 

The EU’s COVID-19 committee (COVI) twice invited Bourla last year to appear before Parliament 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. 

On Wednesday the COVI Committee voted to ban Pfizer representatives from Parliament, which would block the company’s lobbyists — and Bourla himself — from access to lawmakers. 

The proposal will now go to the Conference of Committee Chairs (CCC) which will hold a new vote on various factors including the duration of the ban and whether all Pfizer representatives are included. The vote is expected to take place at the end of the month.

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 ($1,299,) per year for help from outside lobbying consultancies. 

Pfizer’s lack of transparency matches that of Israel, the first country to sign a contract with Pfizer for COVID-19 vaccines. 

Last month, Israel’s Health Ministry managed to “recover” its historic vaccine agreement with Pfizer after telling a Jerusalem District Court that not only had it disappeared, but the ministry was not sure it had even been signed. After media inquiries, the ministry “found” the agreement, which remains heavily redacted.