European Commission guilty of ‘maladministration’ over Pfizer texts

theguardian.com:

An investigation by an EU watchdog into text messages sent by European commission president Ursula von der Leyen to Pfizer’s chief executive has found the European Commission guilty of ‘maladministration’.

Von der Leyen’s aides are heavily criticised in the ruling from Emily O’Reilly, the European ombudsman, for their handling of requests for publication of the messages sent during negotiations over vaccine purchases.

The commission had initially claimed that after a thorough search they had not ‘identified’ any such texts to Albert Bourla, whose company is forecasting revenues of $36bn (£26bn) from vaccine sales this financial year.

But the EU ombudsman’s investigation found that the search carried out by commission officials had actually been restricted to an internal record of documents.

Von der Leyen’s texts had not been stored there and the commission president’s personal office had not been asked if any such messages existed.

The commission later claimed that they did not believe that text messages were covered by the EU law regarding the requirement to store documents relating to policy as they were “short-lived”.

O’Reilly said the commission’s behaviour fell short of the levels of transparency required under EU law.

She said: “The narrow way in which this public access request was treated meant that no attempt was made to identify if any text messages existed. This falls short of reasonable expectations of transparency and administrative standards in the commission.

“Not all text messages need to be recorded, but text messages clearly do fall under the EU transparency law and so relevant text messages should be recorded. It is not credible to claim otherwise.”

The commission has now been instructed to carry out a further