'Wake-up call': EU Ombudsman finds Commission guilty of maladministration over Pfizer texts

euronews.com:

The EU's watchdog on Thursday criticised the Commission's handling of a request for the texts exchanged between President Ursula von der Leyen and the CEO of Pfizer as a "wake-up call" for EU accountability and upheld her finding of maladministration over the matter. 

EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly said that one year after the initial request from a journalist for the text messages between von der Leyen and Albert Bourla, the Commission had failed to say whether it had looked "directly and correctly for the text messages and if not, why not."

In its response to O'Reilly's request, which the Ombudsman's office released in late June, the Commission had said that the search for the text messages in question "has not yielded any results". 

It also argued that "due to their short-lived and ephemeral nature" text messages in general "do not contain important information relating to policies, activities and decisions of the Commission" and that therefore they were not being kept as official EU documents.

O'Reilly had described the Commission's response then as problematic given that she had told the EU's executive that its search for the messages should not be limited to documents that fulfil its recording criteria.

"The Commission should have searched for the documents requested, including those not registered. The Commission’s failure to do so is maladministration," she concluded on Thursday. 

She said that the Commission's handling of the matter is a "wake-up call for all EU institutions about ensuring accountability in an era of instant messaging", underlining that it "leaves the regrettable impression of an EU institution that is not forthcoming on matters of significant public interest."

"Public access to work-related text messages