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

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.

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.

Asked for comment, Mr. Fanta said, “I’m shocked and appalled that they decided to delete the message after I made my request,” calling it an action taken in “bad faith.”

The commission says that Mr. Seibert determined that the messages’ “sole aim” was scheduling, and that they did not need to be retained.

The commission says it now cannot find the texts, and suggests, without stating it explicitly, that it no longer has them. It explains that Ms. von der Leyen has replaced her phone repeatedly since 2021 without fully transferring the data to her new devices. And it says that when Mr. Seibert recently searched her latest device and her messages on the Signal app, he did not find the exchanges.

The picture that emerges is one of a powerful president whose written communications about a matter of great public interest, at a critical moment in recent history, appear to have been shared with only her closest adviser, and then lost or disposed of.

“There are a lot of questions — I don’t find this response satisfying for anyone,” said Nick Aiossa, the director at Transparency International E.U., an anti-corruption think tank. He questioned why the texts were not disclosed if they were known to exist in 2021.

“They certainly are not changing their ways on issues of transparency,” he said.

“According to the Commission’s rules, both then and now, there is no obligation to register and store information of short-lived content that does not require any follow-up by the Commission and its services,” Paula Pinho, a spokeswoman for the commission, said in response to a request for comment.

Ms. Pinho pointed out that its policy of not registering such messages “was not challenged by the Court in its judgment.”

While different governments take different approaches to electronic messages under freedom of information laws, some places, including many U.S. states, and in some cases the U.S. federal government, treat them as public records.

But the European Commission has resisted changing its policies or providing more information, even in the face of sustained criticism.

In 2022, before The Times filed its lawsuit, the E.U. ombudsman said the commission had engaged in “maladministration” by not searching adequately for the messages in response to Mr. Fanta’s request. The commission told the ombudsman that it had searched in July 2021 for the messages and had not found them, though it now says that Mr. Seibert reviewed them that summer.

When commission lawyers appeared in court in late 2024, they struggled to explain to judges why the messages, which The Times had reported on, could not be found. The commission avoided even admitting explicitly that the texts had ever existed, using more couched language. One of its lawyers said at a November 2024 hearing that the commission didn’t “deny” it.

The commission’s response this week spells out clearly that the messages existed, and that at least one top official, in addition to Ms. von der Leyen, was aware of them.

“We brought this case to enforce the public’s right of access to information,” said Dana Green, a lawyer for The Times. “We believed this was an important case for democratic oversight and public transparency in the European Union. The Commission’s response validates that decision.”

The handling of the text messages, frequently referred to in Brussels as “Pfizergate,” has been a persistent political problem for Ms. von der Leyen. It drew attacks from the political right in particular and even spurred a no-confidence vote on her earlier this summer, the first of its kind in more than a decade.

The attempt, centered on “failures to ensure transparency,” failed to topple her. Ms. von der Leyen accused the lawmaker driving the vote of “spinning debunked conspiracies about text messages.”