European Commission fights vaccine transparency court ruling

Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission won’t accept claims that it was not transparent enough about its lucrative Covid-19 vaccine contracts — even as it fights to conceal her alleged texts with Pfizer.
In a last attempt to defend its position over its obfuscation of the contracts, the Commission is challenging an EU court decision reached in July, the court and Commission confirmed to POLITICO.
The EU’s second-highest court, the General Court of the European Union, ruled partially against the Commission’s decision to redact large parts of the contracts signed between the executive and pharmaceutical companies before making them available to the public.
The appeal will be heard in Europe’s highest court, the Court of Justice, although a date has not yet been set, the court told POLITICO.
In parallel, the Court of Justice will hear details of a second case next month — the so-called “Pfizergate” legal battle over access to alleged text messages between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in the run-up to the EU’s Covid-19 vaccine deal.
The New York Times sued the Commission last year after the EU executive said it did not hold text messages sought by the paper under a freedom of information request. 
It wants the text made public, arguing that could shed some light on how Brussels negotiated its pandemic contracts.
Full details from both sides will be heard in court on Nov. 15, including if and why any text messages were destroyed, the Financial Times reported.
At the heart of both cases is a need to balance public and commercial interests.
The case of the redacted vaccine contracts was originally brought to the General Court by a group of MEPs who wanted more information about the contracts the Commission signed with Covid-19 vaccine suppliers including AstraZeneca, Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and others at the height of the pandemic.
They said they wanted to see the documents to understand the terms in better detail.
The Commission provided partial access and redacted the documents, saying it was necessary to protect the companies’ commercial interests and the decision-making process.
But the General Court argued that the Commission had failed to prove how publishing more details would undermine the commercial interests of the pharmaceutical companies.
And it found fault with the Commission’s refusal to provide personal details of the officials who negotiated the purchase of the vaccines over privacy concerns. 
It said the MEPs demonstrated the “public interest” in identifying that team, to make sure they had no conflicts of interest. 
However, the court agreed that certain clauses of the contracts were covered by the protection of commercial interest, therefore only partially upholding the claims in the lawsuit.
“In these cases, the Commission needed to strike a difficult balance between the right of the public, including MEPs, to information, and the legal requirements emanating from the COVID-19 contracts themselves, which could result in claims for damages at the cost of taxpayers’ money,” it said back in July.