The scandal round Pfizer texts and Covid jabs is giving von der Leyen a style of her personal medication
Nicely, that is awkward. What number of instances has Ursula von der Leyen, European Fee president and unelected de facto ruler of the EU, delivered sermons about transparency like she’s the excessive priestess of some type of parallel Brussels Vatican? And now the EU’s personal high courtroom has referred to as her out in a ruling for neglecting to observe what she preaches.
Again in 2023, throughout her State of the European Union handle, doing her best impression of somebody elected by the precise public, von der Leyen declared the necessity to douse any and all sketchiness in daylight in an effort to “not permit any autocracy’s Trojan horses to assault our democracies from inside.”
“Transparency ought to characterize the work of all of the members of the Fee and of their cupboards,” she mentioned way back to 2019. “I’ve requested commissioners…to have interaction extra and be extra clear,” she proclaimed in a speech to EU parliamentarians final yr. Transparency and accountability additionally figured prominently in her bid for reappointment by the EU’s ruling elites final yr.
Nice information! She will be able to now lastly embark on this noble mission, and start her journey with little greater than a easy look within the mirror. As a result of the European Court docket of Justice – the physique that guidelines on whether or not EU establishments have really crossed into illegality, not simply occupying their regular territory of elite-grade idiocy – has simply determined that Queen Ursula’s Fee can’t simply wave away a pile of her personal Covid-era textual content messages by going, “Whoops! They disappeared. Oh nicely, what do you do?” Which is principally what the Fee’s response was to the New York Occasions when it requested to see these messages.
And the way did the Occasions know that these texts even existed? As a result of Ursula actually advised them, bragging in an interview about how she scored so many vaxxes as a result of she’s tremendous tight with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. All this was for a chunk spotlighting her Covid efforts, printed in April 2021: “How Europe sealed a Pfizer vaccine take care of texts and calls.”
The article featured the identical type of glamour images paying homage to the nice ol’ days when Ursula was Germany’s protection minister from 2013 to 2019, beneath former Chancellor Angela Merkel, and doing picture shoots in entrance of army {hardware} whereas accusations swirled that she had bungled the finances with shady protection contracts, even because the Bundeswehr was caught utilizing brooms for weapons throughout a NATO train, because the Atlantic Council reported in 2015.
“For a month, Ms von der Leyen had been exchanging texts and calls with Bourla, the chief govt of Pfizer… Pfizer may need extra doses it might provide the bloc – many extra,” the NYT piece reads, referring to the “private diplomacy” that “performed an enormous function in a deal” for 1.8 billion Pfizer anti-Covid doses.
So the Occasions hears about these textual content messages and was like, “Oh, cool. Let’s see!”
Immediately Queen Ursula turned lots much less chatty. So the Occasions took the matter to the EU’s personal high courtroom to get the disclosure. And now this courtroom has mentioned, in authorized phrases, that Ursula can’t simply ghost the Occasions – and the general public by extension – with out giving an actual purpose. That there must be a “believable clarification to justify the non possession” of the texts. And likewise, the courtroom says that “the Fee has failed to clarify in a believable method” why it thought that these messages had been so trivial that they might be vaporized like they had been simply her Eurovision contest textual content voting and never a matter of public document which, by definition, ought to be maintained.
Out of those little chats got here €71 billion in Covid jab contracts with Huge Pharma’s Pfizer and AstraZeneca – 11 of them to be exact, totaling 4.6 billion doses, paid for with money taken straight from EU taxpayers. Sufficient for ten doses for each EU citizen.
Seems that freewheeling it might have resulted in some penalties that would have been averted had a various group of minds been engaged on the problem, as protocol usually dictates, and never simply Ursula’s. It’s not like there hasn’t been a expensive fallout from all this. An enormous chunk of the EU, together with Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, is shouting about surplus doses for which they’re on the hook, urging Brussels to renegotiate the contractual phrases with Huge Pharma. Germany alone has reportedly trashed 200 million of them. Tough to barter, although, when nobody’s even positive what the phrases had been, because the second-highest European courtroom identified final yr. “The Fee didn’t give the general public sufficiently broad entry to the acquisition agreements for COVID-19 vaccines… The Fee didn’t exhibit that wider entry to these clauses would really undermine the industrial pursuits of these undertakings,” it dominated.
The main points of those contracts – how they had been made, what they are saying, and the way anybody’s imagined to again out of them if residents politely decline to max out their ten-jab punch card – stay a thriller.
Again in 2024, Brussels kind of shrugged and advised that it might actually solely be as clear because the courts pressured it to be. So hey, what are you able to do? “Usually, the Fee grants the widest potential public entry to paperwork, in step with the rules of openness and transparency,” the EU mentioned, underscoring that the decrease courtroom ruling “confirmed that the Fee was entitled to supply solely partial entry.”
Nicely, excellent news, guys! Your very personal high courtroom simply dominated you could now be much more clear! So go loopy. Be the change that you simply preserve saying you wish to be on the planet. Nothing is holding you again now. If transparency had been a vaccine, this courtroom simply gave Ursula a booster. So we’ll see if it takes. I received’t maintain my breath.
The statements, views and opinions expressed on this column are solely these of the writer and don’t essentially characterize these of RT.
