The General Court of the European Union on Wednesday annulled the European Commission’s refusal to grant a New York Times journalist access to text messages exchanged between Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.
According to a communication published on Wednesday, the judgment concluded that the Commission failed to provide a credible explanation for its claim that it no longer holds the requested messages, which were allegedly sent during Covid-19 vaccine procurement negotiations.
The ruling comes in response to a 2022 request by Matina Stevi, a Brussels-based journalist with The New York Times, who sought access to all text messages exchanged between von der Leyen and Bourla between Jan. 1, 2021, and May 11, 2022. The Commission denied the request, stating that it possessed no such documents. Stevi and The New York Times challenged that decision before the EU’s General Court.
The full transcript of the Court’s ruling was published on its website.
On May 11, 2022, Stevi submitted a formal request to the European Commission seeking access to the text messages. The request was registered by the Commission the following day, on May 12. When the Commission failed to respond within the time frame set by EU transparency rules, Stevi’s legal representative filed an initial confirmatory application on June 28, 2022, reiterating the request for access.
On July 20, 2022, the Commission responded to the initial application, stating that it did not possess any documents corresponding to the request. In response, Stevi’s representative submitted a second confirmatory application on Aug. 9, 2022, which was formally registered the same day. Later that month, on Aug. 31, the Commission notified Stevi that the deadline for its response would be extended by 15 working days, setting a new target date of Sept. 21.
On Sept. 21, the Commission informed Stevi that the assessment of her application had been completed but that the draft decision still required approval from its Legal Service. Nearly two months later, on Nov. 16, 2022, the Commission issued its final decision, reiterating that it did not hold any of the requested text messages and therefore could not grant access.
The Court found that the Commission’s justification was insufficient and that Stevi and The New York Times had provided “relevant and consistent evidence” showing that such messages had existed. The Commission, it said, failed to meet its obligations under the Access to Documents Regulation and the principle of good administration as enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
The judgment scrutinized the Commission’s procedural conduct, noting that it relied on assumptions and imprecise information throughout the request process. It also emphasized that public institutions must document and retain information related to their activities in a “non-arbitrary and predictable manner.”
In its decision, the Court stated that “despite those imprecisions, [the Commission] maintains that it does not possess the requested documents, with the result that it is for the applicants to produce relevant and consistent evidence capable of rebutting the presumption of non-possession of those documents.”
That presumption was indeed rebutted, the Court held, by a New York Times article and transcripts of interviews conducted by Stevi with both von der Leyen and Bourla in April 2021. The article reported that for a month during vaccine talks, von der Leyen and Bourla “had been exchanging texts and telephone calls.” In the interview transcript, Bourla said that “[the Commission President and I] exchanged text messages, if there was something that we needed to discuss,” and that von der Leyen had “sent me her phone [number].” These statements provided sufficient grounds for the Court to determine that the text messages likely existed at some point.
The Commission, by contrast, was found to have offered no credible detail about the searches it had conducted for the messages or about their fate. “It remains impossible to know with certainty,” the Court wrote, “whether the requested text messages still exist or whether they have been deleted and, if so, whether such a deletion took place deliberately or automatically.” The Commission also failed to clarify whether von der Leyen’s mobile phone had been replaced, and if so, what happened to the previous device and its data.
“The Commission did not provide in the contested decision any plausible explanation as to why it had not been able to find the requested documents,” the Court held.
Furthermore, the Court rejected the Commission’s argument that the messages did not constitute official documents because they were allegedly short-lived or lacked policy significance. Even if the messages were not registered in its document system, the Commission was still obligated to retain and account for them under EU transparency rules. “Institutions cannot deprive of all substance the right of access to documents which they hold by failing to register the documentation relating to their activities,” the Court held.
The Commission’s handling of the request, the Court concluded, “breached the principle of good administration laid down in Article 41 of the Charter.”
As a result, it annulled the Commission’s decision and ordered the institution to pay the applicants’ legal costs.
The judgment has led to calls for greater transparency within EU institutions and among the bloc’s leaders.
Rob Roos, a former Dutch MEP who was vice-president of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the European Parliament during the now-dubbed “Pfizergate scandal,” wrote how his legal challenge against the Commission was dismissed at the time.
BREAKING:
The ECJ ruled Von der Leyen was wrong to hide her texts with Pfizer’s CEO—€35B in taxpayer money at stake.Yet my case as an MEP was ruled inadmissible, while a foreign newspaper was accepted. Transparency isn’t optional. Democracy demands it. Back to court.
— Rob Roos
(@Rob_Roos) May 14, 2025
“My case as an MEP was ruled inadmissible, while a foreign newspaper was accepted. Transparency isn’t optional. Democracy demands it. Back to court,” he wrote on X.
Hungarian MEP András László slammed the corruption scandals at the highest level in Brussels, which he claimed keep piling up. “Europeans want change in Brussels. We deserve better leadership! Qatargate, Pfizergate, Hololei, Reynders and money laundering, Green Deal and Timmermans, fake NGOs… The interests of Europeans are being sold out. Enough is enough!”
Several other European lawmakers demanded that the text messages now finally be released to see what agreements were reached over Covid-19 vaccines between von der Leyen and Bourla.
“She should have made her text messages in the Pfizergate affair public,” said Dutch MEP Marieke Ehlers. “This proves the need for the parliamentary commission of inquiry into transparency proposed by the Patriots for Europe [parliamentary group].”
Anna Bryłka, Polish MEP for the right-wing Confederation, and Spanish MEP Hermann Tertsch of Vox, went further, calling on von der Leyen to resign following the judgment.
The European Commission is yet to formally respond to the judgment.
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