The New York Times article, from April 2021 suggested that Bourla and von der Leyen personally communicated over text messages to help close Europe’s biggest Covid 19 vaccine deal. “This was a major deal in very difficult times concerning all the citizens of the European Union,” Stevis-Gridness and the paper’s lawyer Bondine Kloostra told the court.
The American outlet is asking judges at the EU’s lower-tier court, the General Court, to decide whether von der Leyen’s office was wrong to refuse to release text messages she allegedly exchanged with the boss of Covid vaccine-maker Pfizer in early 2021.
At the time, the Commission chief was negotiating a valuable deal to secure up to 1.8 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines from the company.
So far, judges have questioned the Commission on the existence of the text messages, and whether their content was significant enough to force their release — something which the New York Times said can’t be proven unless they were made public.
A transcription from the Times’ interview with Bourla was read out in the court room by the Times’ lawyer Flip Schüller. “If there is an issue she (von der Leyen) wanted to know, and also I wanted to know if they have any concerns, I wanted to know. So we exchanged text messages, if there was something that we needed to discuss.”
But the Commission wrote in its written arguments that the texts “would have been registered” in its document management system — and therefore available for the public to request access — if they contained “important information” that wasn’t “short-lived,” or if they led to or required any follow-up or action by the Commission or one of its departments.