The European Union Court has declared the decision of the European Commission to deny a journalist from the “New York Times” access to text messages between the President of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen and the Pfizer CEO invalid. The US newspaper’s lawsuit was successful at the Luxembourg court on Wednesday. The Commission initially stated that it did not have the requested documents because they were not archived and therefore no longer findable.
The regulation on access to documents aims to provide the public with the greatest possible access to documents of EU bodies, the judges stated as a reason. Normally, all documents should be accessible, unless an organ declares that a document does not exist. However, this presumption can be refuted by relevant and consistent indications.
In the case at hand, the court stated that the plaintiffs presented such indications that suggested an exchange of text messages had taken place during the Covid-19 pandemic in the context of the vaccine purchase.
The court found that the Commission did not provide plausible explanations for the alleged lack of documents. It criticized the Commission for not adequately explaining the investigations conducted to find the documents or whether the text messages were deleted. The significance of the messages in connection with the vaccine purchase was also not sufficiently acknowledged.