Ms Emily O'Reilly:

There were two sets of recommendations. On the text messages exchanged between President von der Leyen and the head of Pfizer, Mr. Bourla, we were recommending it be established whether they are there. I think it is taken now that they are, if only because Mr. Bourla wrote a book and talked about them. If they are there, then we should see whether they can be released under Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001, which is the freedom of information legislation. We were not saying they should be released, as there might be reasons they should not be, but we were saying we should get them and examine them. I have used this expression before, but the Commission basically stonewalled us, so we do not know. We have had no further information about them. As I said in my opening statement, it was The New York Timesthat requested the text messages at the start and it is taking the Commission to court. The Commission is now saying it will wait until the court decides on this and then move on it. However, it is not as simple as that. I have looked into it, the European Court of Auditors has looked into it, and we now have the European Public Prosecutor's Office seriously looking into it. We do not know what exactly it is looking into, but it is looking into the vaccine contracts generally.

The problem with all this is it has dogged the Commission for the past few years. It is problematic because it plays into what the Eurosceptic and anti-vax communities say. People can accept a lot if they feel people are being open and honest with them. I have no idea what was in the text messages, but perhaps President von der Leyen should have said at the outset they were from a time when tens of thousands of Europeans were dying and there was chaos across Europe. This was before any vaccines had come. The deal with AstraZeneca had fallen through because of contractual issues and it was giving a better deal to the UK or whatever it was. We desperately needed to make a better deal with somebody else. Maybe not everything was done by the book and so on, but the President did it anyway. If she had done that, people would have been understanding of it, but when something is hidden, all sorts of conspiracy theories arise around it and it is not good for the Commission, which is doing so much good work in other areas, to allow this to fester because it does not go away and it will not go away.