As of: 01/28/2022 4:55 p.m
The EU ombudswoman has reprimanded the EU Commission for its handling of an inquiry from journalists. It’s about text messages between President von der Leyen and Pfizer boss Bourla. It’s not the politician’s first SMS problem.
It was “a maladministration” that the EU ombudswoman Emily O’Reilly saw in Ursula von der Leyen’s EU Commission. Because the commission rejected a journalist’s request for text messages between von der Leyen and the head of US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer about vaccines. Reason: The SMS were not registered. According to the rules, documents about important processes would be registered, but not every SMS or WhatsApp message.
According to the European Ombudsman, however, the Commission has not even tried to find out whether the text messages exist at all. This does not meet the expectations of transparency and administrative standards. If text messages concern EU action then they should be treated as documents and access to them is a fundamental right.
Criticism of the Greens in the EU Parliament
The German Greens in the EU Parliament speak of an outrageous process. Under no circumstances should SMS be systematically deleted.
The EU Commission now wants to answer the corresponding complaint from the ombudsman, said a Commission spokesman, but rejected the criticism of how the journalist’s request was handled.
Not the first case of deleted text messages
It is not the first case in which text messages from Ursula von der Leyen’s mobile phone have been deleted: After her tenure as Defense Minister in Berlin, text messages that could have possibly served as evidence in the advisor affair were deleted from her company mobile phone.