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Luxembourg According to a ruling by the General Court of the European Union (formerly the European Court of First Instance), Ursula von der Leyen’s EU Commission has violated EU law by keeping secret information on corona vaccine contracts worth billions.

The judges in Luxembourg ruled that the Brussels authority had not granted sufficient access to documents, particularly with regard to possible conflicts of interest and compensation rules for vaccine manufacturers. The ruling can be appealed before the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

During the pandemic, the EU Commission negotiated and concluded contracts for hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine with pharmaceutical companies on behalf of the member states in 2020 and 2021.

The procedure has been repeatedly criticized because the contracts were only partially made public or because there were delays in the delivery of the vaccine. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office, among others, is investigating this matter.

In 2021, EU MPs and private individuals applied for access to the treaties. However, the EU Commission, headed by the German CDU politician von der Leyen, only partially granted them.

Parliamentarians and private individuals therefore filed suit and were partially successful. The ruling comes one day before the European Parliament votes on a second term for Ursula von der Leyen as Commission President.

The court found that the EU Commission had not adequately justified why extensive access to the clauses on compensation rules would harm the companies’ business interests. The EU Commission had also refused access to the documents, citing the protection of individuals’ privacy.

However, the plaintiffs had properly demonstrated the specific purpose of the public interest in publishing the data: it is only possible to verify that there is no conflict of interest if the names and professional roles of the persons involved in the contracts are available.

Many points that were legally challenged by individual MEPs and a group of vaccine opponents from France are not objectionable in the court’s view. However, the court also found that in some places the Commission should have explained better why it had blacked out certain passages, said the health policy spokesman for the largest group in the European Parliament (EPP Christian Democrats), Peter Liese.

He stressed that the procurement of vaccines by the European Commission had, on balance, been a great success. It is unthinkable what would have happened if various European countries had had vaccines but others had not. He urged us to look back. Anyone who criticizes the behavior of the European Commission today should remember the situation in February and March 2021.

There was already plenty of vaccine in Israel, Great Britain and the USA, while the quantities for the European Union were still very modest. In my view, there is nothing wrong with talking to the companies in this situation and also meeting some of the companies’ demands so that the European population can quickly get enough vaccine, said Liese.

It would be good if the Commission’s lawyers now analyzed the ruling in detail and drew conclusions from it. But the conclusion that the Commission did everything wrong can be refuted at first glance at the ruling, he said. © dpa/may/aerzteblatt.de