Judgment day in EU chief’s Covid vaccine texts case

EU court to rule on transparency test for Ursula von der Leyen's text messages with Pfizer CEO.

A top court is to rule on Wednesday (May 14, 2025) on whether the EU failed the transparency test by declining to release text messages sent by Ursula von der Leyen to the head of Pfizer as the bloc tried to secure Covid vaccines.

The case before the Court of Justice of the European Union (EUCJ) is seen as a test for the EU Commission president, whose governance has at times been accused of centralised and opaque decision-making.

At its centre are elusive exchanges between Ms. von der Leyen and Albert Bourla, chief executive of Pfizer — which was chosen by the bloc as its main vaccine supplier at the height of the pandemic.

The New York Times, which revealed the existence of the messages, sued the commission in 2023 after Brussels declined to produce them following a freedom of information request.

The commission argued it could not find the texts because they had not been recorded and archived — something it says is done only when the content is deemed “substantive”.

“The commission never denied the existence of text message exchanges,” an EU official said. “What it was argued... is that these exchanges did not contain important information”.

The New York Times has asked the lower chamber of the Luxembourg-based EUCJ to quash the commission’s decision not to hand it the messages. The verdict can be appealed.