European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s silence on her dealings with drugmaker Pfizer, which led to the EU’s biggest-ever Covid-19 vaccine contract, is damaging public trust and a problem that won’t go away, Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly said. informs. Reuters.

“We have to hear what happened or it will continue. Ours just won’t go away,” Emily O’Reilly said in an interview, referring to the EU prosecutor’s investigation into the bloc’s procurement of vaccines and plans by the European Parliament’s Covid committee to hold additional hearings on the matter.

In an interview with the New York Times in April 2021, von der Leyen said she had been exchanging messages with Pfizer CEO Albert Burla for a month while the contract was being negotiated, leading to calls for their publication.

In June 2022, the commission said it no longer had the texts, which later drew criticism from the EU ombudsman.

O’Reilly argued that many people would understand why von der Leyen turned to Burla to provide support for vaccines in Europe as tens of thousands of people on the continent die from Covid-19.

But secrecy breeds suspicion, she said.

“It’s a gift that keeps on giving to people who are hostile to the EU and who are anti-vaxxers because it can feed the narrative that something is being hidden.”

O’Reilly said the Commission rejected his request last year to release text messages exchanged between von der Leyen and Burla in the months before Brussels signed a contract with Pfizer and BioNTech to buy 1.8 billion doses in May 2021.

A Commission spokesman told Reuters this was completed last June and told the ombudsman that the text messages do not qualify as an EU document that meets freedom of information requirements under transparency rules.

“In an effort to provide greater certainty, the Commission is working to issue guidance on modern communication tools such as text and instant messaging,” a spokesman told Reuters. He invited other EU institutions to do the same, the spokesman added.

The conclusions of the ombudsman appointed by the EU are not binding. They can increase scrutiny from other EU institutions and citizens, which is what happened in this case.

After O’Reilly’s statement, members of the European Parliament expressed their anger at a special hearing in October over Burla’s refusal to appear at the hearing and threatened to keep Pfizer employees and lobbyists out of parliament.

In February, the New York Times said it was suing the commission for failing to release the text messages.