E.U. Did Not Retain Texts Sought by Journalists on Covid Vaccine Deal

New York Times

3 days ago

When the European Union secured a deal to purchase up to 1.8 billion doses of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine in early 2021, there was great interest in how the bloc had managed to clinch an agreement seen as a major victory.
So when it came to light that Ursula von der Leyen, president of the E.U. executive branch, had traded text messages with Pfizer's chief executive while negotiating the deal, journalists were quick to ask for those records under the bloc's transparency rules. The European Union refused, and The New York Times challenged that refusal in court.
This May, an E.U. court ruled that the bloc had 'failed to explain in a plausible manner' why it had not released the records. In response to that ruling, the bloc's executive branch, the European Commission, this week gave The Times a more detailed account, but it may do little to soothe the concerns of transparency activists, for whom the protracted battle has become a flashpoint.
The commission's response implies that it destroyed or lost the messages after judging that they were not important and it had no obligation to keep them.
The response confirms that the text messages once existed, which the commission had avoided stating clearly. It says that Björn Seibert, Ms. von der Leyen's head of cabinet, read them 'in summer 2021.'
That timing means that the decision not to preserve the messages was made after the initial request for them, in May 2021, by Alexander Fanta, then a journalist at a German news outlet. Later, The Times followed up with its own request.
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