{"id":446323,"date":"2025-09-23T17:08:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T17:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/446323\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T17:08:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T17:08:10","slug":"eu-watchdog-probes-macrons-text-to-von-der-leyen-requesting-mercosur-delay-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/446323\/","title":{"rendered":"EU watchdog probes Macron\u2019s text to von der Leyen requesting Mercosur delay \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Follow the Money journalist Alexander Fanta requested<\/a> access to the message, but the Commission replied it could not identify the text as \u201cthe ‘disappearing messages’ feature of the instant-messaging mobile application \u2018Signal\u2019\u00a0was activated on the phone on which the message had been received,” according to the Ombudsman.<\/p>\n

The Commission told the complainant that von der Leyen and her head of cabinet had decided there was no need to register the message and let it disappear.<\/p>\n

It’s not the first time von der Leyen\u2019s handling of text messages has come under scrutiny. In May, an EU court\u00a0found<\/a>\u00a0that the European Commission had been wrong to refuse access to von der Leyen\u2019s text messages with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. In that case, the European Commission also reviewed<\/a> the texts in question and allowed them to be lost.<\/p>\n

The Ombudsman has asked the Commission<\/a> for a meeting by mid-October to discuss Macron’s text and wants the EU executive to share documents showing the “steps taken by the Commission in dealing with the access request” by Oct. 1.<\/p>\n

The message from Macron, a long-time opponent of the EU-Mercosur trade deal, was sent in January 2024 when France was facing massive farmer protests<\/a>. The trade deal was ultimately sealed<\/a> in December last year.<\/p>\n

POLITICO has reached out to the Commission and Macron’s office for comment.<\/p>\n

This article has been updated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Follow the Money journalist Alexander Fanta requested access to the message, but the Commission replied it could not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[34,2000,299,5187,27645,36,22708,1201,6862,11587,1220],"class_list":["post-446323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-farmer-protest","tag-france","tag-mercosur","tag-trade","tag-trade-agreements","tag-transparency","tag-ursula-von-der-leyen"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115254716273382927","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446323","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=446323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}