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Brussels, Jan 19 (EFE) .- The European Commission (EC) says that it deleted the SMS text messages regarding vaccines between its president, Ursula von der Leyen, and the CEO of the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer, Albert Bourla, information that claims for transparency a Dutch MEP.
“Documents will be registered if they contain important information that is not ephemeral or if they may involve action or monitoring by the Commission or one of its departments,” the Community Executive replied in writing to the question from the Dutch Liberal MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld.
The response, written on behalf of the European Commissioner for Values and Transparency, Vera Jourová, corresponds to a written question posed by the MEP as a result of the German magazine Der Spiegel publishing in November 2021 that the Commission said it did not have those messages.
Months earlier, The New York Times newspaper published that Von der Leyen and Bourla had negotiated in 2020 through phone calls and text messages the purchase of more vaccines once morest covid by the community bloc, following the Anglo pharmaceutical company -Swedish AstraZenceneca will deliver less than the doses promised to Brussels.
Von der Leyen was then in the eye of the hurricane, criticized for the shortage of vaccines in the EU while the United States, the United Kingdom or Israel did have enough drugs.
Finally, the Commission signed a contract for 1.8 billion additional doses from 2021 with Pfizer, which also increased deliveries to the European Union for the last tranche of 2020 of its messenger RNA covid drug developed by the German laboratory BionTech .
But the messages were not recorded, according to the Commission, which argues that it acted on the basis of community regulations.
“Due to their short-lived and ephemeral nature, text and instant messages are not intended to contain material information related to the Commission’s policies, activities, and decisions; therefore, they are not considered a document subject to the policy of Commission’s record-keeping”, added the Commissioner in her response.
The MEP, however, considers that the Commission is not the one who should decide which messages are deleted and has asked the European Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, to investigate.
O’Reilly already spoke in November, when the Commission told Die Siegel that it did not have the messages.
The European Ombudsman asked the Executive to update the law on access to EU documents, which is two decades old, to adapt to more modern communication tools.
“This cornerstone of EU transparency comes from a radically different era, predating many modern tools like smartphones, instant messaging and big data. It needs to catch up with today’s reality while maintaining its core strengths,” he said. then O’Reilly at a conference.
Already in her time as German Defense Minister, Von der Leyen generated controversy for another deletion of text messages from her mobile phone, which in that case might have been useful to evaluate her management in awarding contracts to external advisors.
That episode sparked controversy in Germany in December 2019, when von der Leyen had just taken up her post as Commission president.
The investigation commission that was then interested in her management as a minister when awarding contracts, for which the Supreme Court had shown doubts, discovered that certain messages no longer existed.
The data, supposedly deleted by the manufacturer for security reasons, was deleted following the investigation commission had requested access to it as evidence.
(c) EFE Agency
