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Did Ursula von der Leyen exchange text messages with Pfizer’s CEO? The Commission still isn’t telling.
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In the world of the everyday, a proposition is either true or false. Likewise, an object either exists or it doesn’t.
But for the European Commission, the existence of the alleged text messages exchanged between its boss Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla is more akin to the exotic particles hypothesized by quantum physics: Fuzzy entities of uncertain ontological status, both a particle and a wave at once.
The correspondence was first reported on by the New York Times. The U.S. newspaper wrote that at the height of the pandemic the EU and Pfizer’s top brass personally communicated over text to help set up the EU’s biggest COVID-19 vaccine deal, eventually for 1.1 billion doses.
That set off journalists who’ve been asking to see the text messages, invoking the EU’s own document transparency rules, and who have been met by a wall of silence from the Commission’s spokesperson services.
POLITICO also filed an access to documents request asking to see the texts. After an initial negative reply, we appealed and put a few simple questions to the Commission: did von der Leyen and Bourla exchange messages; did the texts get deleted; and if they didn’t, what was in them?
The response has eventually arrived and it’s worthy of a Zen kōan (can you hear the sound of one smartphone texting?) for its twisty, pretzel logic.
No text messages were registered in the Commission’s document registration system. Given that the messages “would have been registered if they contained important information which is not short-lived,” that means the text messages, if they ever existed, must have not been very important. And if they’re not important, then they wouldn’t have had to be registered in the first place.
If that seems a little circular — well — it’s not just you.
The fun doesn’t stop there. One thing POLITICO didn’t ask was that the Commission fabricate non-existing documents. Yet that didn’t stop them invoking case law to protest that they shouldn’t have to: “Neither Article 11 of Regulation 1049/2001 nor the obligation of assistance in Article 6(2) thereof, can oblige an institution to create a document for which it has been asked to grant access but which does not exist.”
Concretely, the Commission says that it doesn’t have the texts (or rather, “does not hold any documents that would correspond to the description given in your application”). It seems to hint that they don’t exist — or at least cannot verify whether they did exist.
Which may all be fair enough if it weren’t for the fact that the one person that can answer all these questions works for the Commission itself. It begs the question, has anyone actually gone to the 13th floor of the Berlaymont to ask the esteemed president herself?
It’s not clear. In its response, the Commission promises it has undertaken a “renewed, thorough search” for the texts. Whether that includes a chat over coffee or an e-mail to von der Leyen is anyone’s guess.
The Commission’s reply to POLITICO is similar to what it already said to European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly. She found the institution guilty of maladministration for not looking properly for the texts after another journalist, Alexander Fanta, also was refused access. That symbolic slap on the wrist was met with a shrug by the EU’s executive.
All this shows the limits of the EU’s voluntary transparency mechanisms. The courts, however, may be a different story. And with the New York Times having brought a case in front of the European Court of Justice on the question of the text messages, they may have a chance to weigh in before long.
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