{"id":1019797,"date":"2026-06-11T13:16:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T13:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1019797\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T13:16:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T13:16:14","slug":"eu-commission-must-publish-covid-vaccine-contracts-in-full-says-top-court-lawyer-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1019797\/","title":{"rendered":"EU Commission must publish Covid vaccine contracts in full, says top court lawyer \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"

The European Commission is set to be forced to publish\u00a0complete versions of its\u00a0multi-billion euro\u00a0contracts to buy Covid-19 vaccines\u00a0after the lawyer to the\u00a0EU\u2019s top court urged it to throw out an appeal by the EU executive.<\/p>\n

In a legal opinion published on Thursday<\/a> (11 June), the advocate general at\u00a0the European Court of Justice, Athanasios\u00a0Rantos, said that a 2024 court ruling\u00a0that requires the commission to disclose unredacted versions of the contracts should remain intact.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In July 2024, the EU\u2019s top court ruled that\u00a0the EU executive\u00a0had not granted the public sufficiently broad access to the agreements for the purchase of Covid-19 vaccines.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The case against the commission was initially brought by five Green MEPs<\/a> in 2021, requesting access to documents related to the joint purchases of Covid vaccines. <\/p>\n

At the time, the commission had only shared heavily redacted versions of the Covid-19 vaccine purchase agreements, arguing\u00a0that full disclosure would impinge on\u00a0commercial confidentiality\u00a0and that naming the officials who brokered the contracts would affect their right to privacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The court\u00a0added that the commission should also have published text messages between commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer chief executive\u00a0Albert Bourla, who personally negotiated a \u20ac35bn vaccine contract, effectively bypassing the normal public procurement process.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

During the\u00a0pandemic,\u00a0the commission agreed contracts with pharmaceutical giants including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna to\u00a0procure\u00a0up to 4.6\u00a0billion doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, worth \u20ac71bn for the bloc\u2019s 27 countries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In his opinion, Rantos\u00a0said that \u201cthe commission has not demonstrated that the disclosure of the clauses relating to indemnification would be such as to encourage abusive strategic conduct or to increase the risk of liability claims against the pharmaceutical undertakings\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rantos added that \u201cthe disclosure of\u00a0anonymised\u00a0versions of declarations of\u00a0no of\u00a0conflict of interests does not make it possible for the impartiality of the members of the negotiation team to be specifically and effective ascertained.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Though advocate general opinions are not binding on the Court, in practice it is rare for judges to disagree with them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The commission, which has\u00a0only\u00a0ever\u00a0published\u00a0documents that\u00a0omit the names of the officials involved in the negotiations as well as contract clauses related to indemnifying the pharma companies,\u00a0then\u00a0quickly\u00a0lodged appeals before the Court of Justice\u00a0to avoid\u00a0complying with\u00a0the\u00a0ruling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The commission was not alone in scrambling to buy vaccines, personal protective equipment,\u00a0ventilators\u00a0and other medical kits when the scale of the Covid pandemic became clear in spring 2020. In the process, standard procurement rules were often ignored to save time, resulting in\u00a0large amounts\u00a0of public money being lost to corruption and inflated tender prices.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For its part, the commission argued<\/a> that it had \u201cneeded to strike a difficult balance between the right of the public, including MEPs, to information, and the legal requirements emanating from the Covid-19 contracts themselves, which could result in claims for damages at the cost of taxpayers\u2019 money.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Commission is set to be forced to publish\u00a0complete versions of its\u00a0multi-billion euro\u00a0contracts to buy Covid-19 vaccines\u00a0after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1019798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[217083,2000,299,5187,282106,263037,263035,282104,263036,282105],"class_list":["post-1019797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-typedefinedterm","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-identifier4304","tag-identifier4378","tag-namecovid","tag-nameecj","tag-termcodecovid","tag-termcodeecj"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116731667304316147","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1019797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1019798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1019797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1019797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1019797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}