Kyriakides responds to EU court ruling over Covid-19 vaccine transparency

European Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides on Wednesday responded to a court ruling which found the European Commission had not been adequately transparent regarding the contracts it signed for Covid-19 vaccines.

The European General Court had earlier in the day ruled that the commission’s decision to grant members of the European parliament only partial access to documents related to the contracts, with some of the content therein redacted, was not congruent with the reasons they had given to do so.

The commission claimed that wider access to the documents would have undermined the commercial interests of the pharmaceutical companies involved, which included AstraZeneca, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, BioNTech, Pfizer, Moderna, and others.

Additionally, the commission had failed to disclose the personal interests of the officials who negotiated the contracts, citing privacy concerns. However, the court found that it was in the public interest for those individuals to be identified to the MEPs, to be able to ascertain if conflicts of interest had arisen.

In response on Wednesday evening, Kyriakides said the commission’s legal advisers would study the decision and then come to a conclusion regarding its next steps.

“All I will say is that we had to manage an unprecedented global public health crisis and we did everything possible, together with the European Parliament, to protect the health of European citizens,” she said.

She added that she had held weekly online meetings with commission Vice President Margaritis Schina and a cross-party group of MEPs for over a year, which discussed “every step” on the issue of vaccine contracts.

“Our effort from the beginning … was to have, as much as possible and insofar as the parameters allowed us, more transparency,” she said, adding that her methods were successful.

To this end, she pointed out that Covid-19 vaccines were available in all EU member states by December 2020.

Her words echoed those of the commission’s statement on the matter, which said it “needed to strike a difficult balance between the right of the public … to information, and the legal requirements emanating from the Covid-19 contracts”.

Should it so wish, the commission can appeal to the European Court of Justice.