Europe Court on Covid vaccine: EU Commission gave too little information

According to a ruling by the EU Court of Justice, the EU Commission has breached EU law by withholding information on multi-billion euro coronavirus vaccine contracts.

The judges in Luxembourg ruled that the Brussels authority had not granted sufficient access to documents, particularly with regard to possible conflicts of interest and compensation rules for vaccine manufacturers. The ruling can be appealed before the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

During the pandemic, the EU Commission negotiated and concluded contracts for hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine with pharmaceutical companies on behalf of the Member States in 2020 and 2021. The procedure was repeatedly criticized because the contracts were only partially made public or because there were delays in the delivery of the vaccine. The European Public Prosecutor's Office, among others, is investigating the matter.

In 2021, MEPs and private individuals applied for access to the contracts. However, the EU Commission, led by German CDU politician Ursula von der Leyen, only granted this access in part. Parliamentarians and private individuals therefore took legal action and have now been partially vindicated. The ruling comes one day before the vote in the European Parliament on a second term of office for Ursula von der Leyen as Commission President.

The court objected to the fact that the EU Commission had not sufficiently justified why extensive access to the clauses on compensation rules would harm the commercial interests of companies. The EU Commission had also refused access to the documents with reference to the protection of people's privacy. However, the plaintiffs had duly demonstrated the special purpose of the public interest in the publication of the data: Namely, it could only be verified that there was no conflict of interest if the names and professional roles of the persons involved in the contracts were available.

SDA