The ECJ's landmark ruling isn't about vaccines or corruption; it's a battle for democracy against an elite determined to hide the truth and protect its power.
By Tamás ORBÁN
The day is finally here: the European Court of Justice is set to deliver a landmark ruling on Wednesday, May 14th, in what's been described as the "biggest corruption scandal in human history," also known as 'Pfizergate.'
Specifically, the court will decide whether text messages qualify as official documents and are, therefore, subject to compulsory disclosure. But the implications of whether the court decides to protect EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen over the interests of four hundred million Europeans go well beyond vaccines and money. Pfizergate is about the transparency and democracy in the heart of the EU, and its outcome will heavily influence people's trust in the European project for years, or decades, to come.
Pfizergate has been going on for a long time now, so to understand how we ended up here, we first need to go back to five years ago, to a continent gripped by fear of the pandemic, presenting an opportunity that was perhaps too good to pass up.
Lead-up to Pfizergate: Ten shots for everyone
The seeds of Pfizergate were sown in 2020, when von der Leyen's EU Commission- like many times before and even more after-hijacked a crisis to stealthily transfer previously unknown powers onto itself.
After being promised early access and a better deal by manufacturers, EU member states were quick to allow the Commission to negotiate joint COVID vaccine procurement on their behalf, which turned out to be a grave mistake. Not only did the vaccines arrive much later than promised, and EU taxpayers ended up paying significantly more for them than the global average, but the Commission also ordered quantities that were simply unjustifiable.
In total, von der Leyen has personally signed contracts for up to 4.6 billion vaccine doses-or over ten doses for every single European, meaning five times as many as the recommended dosage-worth an estimated €71 billion. To date, with all additional booster shots included, EU citizens have been administered just over 1 billion COVID shots, meaning that 3.5 billion since-expired vaccine doses have either been discarded or will be shortly, a waste of taxpayer funds of eye-watering proportions.
What's more, we still don't know the exact prices or any other details of the classified contracts, despite both the European Court of Justice and the EU Ombudsman ruling that they must be made publicly available. Not a fan of transparency, the EU Commission immediately appealed the court ruling, and a follow-up decision is still pending behind the scenes.
Europe's most wanted text messages
Then there's the case of Pfizer, which in 2021 signed contracts with Brussels for 1.8 billion doses, or about 40% of the total procurement, making it by far the largest supplier of the EU. Understanding the Pfizer contracts, therefore, could be key to understanding how and why the EU Commission made these seemingly unreasonable decisions. And the key to those could still be hidden in von der Leyen's phone.
It was von der Leyen herself who revealed during an interview in April 2021 that he negotiated the historic vaccine procurement deal with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla for the 1.8 billion doses at least partly via text messages. The admission immediately sparked the interest of those who already suspected foul play behind the unreasonable numbers, demanding the texts to be released to clear von der Leyen's name of the corruption allegations.
As you know, von der Leyen refused, claiming that the "short-lived" texts had been accidentally deleted, but there was "nothing substantial" discussed in those messages worth disclosing anyway. The New York Times did not give up, and after more than a year of unsuccessful freedom of information requests-repeatedly backed by the EU Ombudsman, whose non-binding rulings demanding disclosure were simply ignored-the paper sued the EU Commission at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in January 2023.
This brings us to Wednesday's ruling, two and a half years later. If we are to speculate on how this will unfold, it's worth remembering that the ECJ's case was not the only one trying to uncover the elusive texts and determine whether von der Leyen was promised anything in exchange for spending Europeans' money like there was no tomorrow.
Where Belgian law failed
There was also a parallel civil lawsuit lodged against von der Leyen by a Belgian lobbyist at the Liège court in April 2023, in which she stood accused of high-level corruption, "usurpation of functions and title," "destruction of public documents," and even undermining the "collective faith" in Belgium and its public institutions.
The lawsuit was joined by over 1,000 co-complainants, including NGOs, transparency watchdogs, and two EU member states, Hungary and Poland, although the latter quit the case after long-term von der Leyen ally Donald Tusk took over as PM of the Polish government in December that year.
The lawyers representing the complainants saw three possibilities: continuing with the deleted messages narrative would have amounted to admitting destroying administrative documents-a crime in Belgium; simply refusing to disclose them would have violated the Belgian constitution; and claiming they cannot be disclosed because they are "private" would have been grounds for establishing an intimate relationship with Bourla, amounting to a "serious conflict of interest" under Belgian law.
There seemed to be no way to escape what was coming; that's why the EU did everything in its power to delay the ruling until they could pressure the courts to drop it. The first hearing in the case was supposed to happen in May last year, but it was mysteriously postponed by six months-possibly on pressure from the Commission to avoid having von der Leyen's reelection chances influenced by it a month later. Then, the December hearing did not produce any results either, as neither the Belgian public prosecutor nor the judge assigned for the case showed up, something that the lawyer had never encountered throughout her career.
In the meantime, the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO), the EU body tasked with investigating financial crimes in the EU institutions, opened its own investigation into Pfizergate. EPPO then repeatedly tried to take over the whole case from the Belgian court, saying that it falls under its jurisdiction-no doubt in order to bury it indefinitely, thereby protecting von der Leyen. When that didn't work, EPPO joined the lawsuit on von der Leyen's side and argued against stripping the Commission chief of her diplomatic immunity during the January 6th hearing. It's worth noting that von der Leyen skipped that hearing as well, not appearing in court once throughout all this time.
Subsequently, on January 20th of this year, the Liège court dismissed the case, declaring it inadmissible due to the complainant's failure to demonstrate "personal harm" resulting from von der Leyen's actions. The ruling was expected, but still questionable, given that one can argue that each and every EU citizen was personally harmed by the wasteful vaccine procurement.
Why Wednesday's ruling matters
With the Belgian lawsuit swept aside and the EPPO demonstrating that it's only interested in burying the case under the guise of its "investigation," the NYT's case at the European Court of Justice remains our last hope for some kind of closure.
The ECJ will finally deliver its ruling in that case on Wednesday, deciding whether text messages, when related to policy-making, should be classed as documents and be eligible for disclosure under existing transparency rules. In other words, the Court will decide whether the decision to withhold the texts was legal or illegal in the first place. If ruled against, von der Leyen could be forced to finally reveal the messages; if not, the case will still haunt her until the end of her mandate in 2029.
We shouldn't hope for too much, though: the ECJ has proven itself to be partial before, especially when it comes to protecting the interests of the EU elite. On the other hand, it could be just as dangerous to side with von der Leyen if the aim was to fix the EU's rapidly worsening public perception. It would be especially awkward to do so just after another landmark report was dropped by the EU Court of Auditors (ECA), which said that the Commission has been severely violating its own transparency standards for years by deliberately making accountability within existing structures "practically impossible."
Nonetheless, Pfizergate remains much more than just another alleged corruption scandal. It's a symbol of the never-ending fight for transparency and democracy in Brussels and a painful reminder that the EU institutions will fight tooth and nail to hide the truth from people like you and me to preserve their power. It's the Achilles' heel of von der Leyen's elitist empire of unaccountable bureaucrats, who believe they stand above even the laws they've created. Pfizergate and all these attempts to silence it show how the EU truly works, therefore, it's a moral duty to keep pursuing the truth, whatever Wednesday's ruling will be.
UPDATE: The European Court of Justice published its verdict on Wednesday, May 14th, ruling against von der Leyen and annulling the EU Commission's decision to withhold the texts. Read about the details here.
Original article: The European Conservative