(LifeSiteNews) — The European Commission has confirmed that hidden messages related to COVID shot contracts between commission leader Ursula von der Leyen and the CEO of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Albert Bourla have been deleted.
A document sent to the New York Times last week confirmed that the commission found the messages between Bourla and von der Leyen in 2021 but that they were “short-lived” and not considered to be worth archiving. The content of text messages was limited to organizing calls between the two individuals, the EU body claimed. The document also stated that von der Leyen’s phone has been replaced several times without data transfers since then.
The text messages in question were reportedly sent between Bourla and von der Leyen in 2020, ahead of the multibillion-dollar COVID vaccine deal between the EU and Pfizer.
In May, the EU Court of Justice ruled that the European Commission violated transparency rules by not releasing the private texts since it gave no “credible explanation” for why the messages did not contain important information. The New York Times, which first reported on the existence of the texts, sued the commission in 2023 after it rejected a Freedom of Information Act request asking for the messages to be released.
READ: EU court rules commissioner broke law by not disclosing texts with Pfizer CEO
Von der Leyen has been under heavy criticism for the text message scandal known as “Pfizergate” since 2023. In July this year, von der Leyen survived a vote of no confidence in the European Parliament that was prompted by the scandal.
Euronews wrote in its report of the deleted messages: “The question arises: If it had long been clear that the text messages were of interest and had been requested by a press agency, why were the messages and the cell phone destroyed in the first place?”
Critics from the left and the right wing have accused von der Leyen of centralizing too much power in her commission and running an authoritarian regime, including the monitoring of all of her staff’s communications. She has also been criticized for a lack of transparency, illustrated by Pfizergate, and for the alleged misuse of EU funds.
“What exactly was in the messages and whether they were indeed ‘fleeting’ organizational text messages will probably never be clarified now that they have been deleted,” Euronews concluded.
