Ursula von der Leyen will be hurt by a July 17 European Court of Justice ruling criticising her lack of transparency when awarding vaccine contracts, her MEP critics have predicted.
The ECJ ruling came just a day before MEPs vote on whether to award von der Leyen a second term as European Commission president.
“This adds yet another reason to vote against von der Leyen,” Per Clausen, an MEP from the Left group and Denmark’s Red-Green Alliance, told Brussels Signal.
“It is quite worrying that the Court has found the Commission to be in breach of its responsibilities in a case like this”, he added.
It would be interesting, he said, to see “how the self-professed ‘law-and-order’ parties will manage to still vote in favour of a Commission President that has just received this verdict – which comes atop numerous previous cases of maladministration by the Commission”.
Judges ruled von der Leyen had not given the public “sufficiently wide access” to how she awarded vaccine contracts. There also were “irregularities” in how her European Commission removed clauses from the versions of contracts that were publicly released.
The Commission “did not demonstrate that wider access to those clauses would actually undermine the commercial interests of those undertakings”, said the ECJ judges.
The EU court judgement “provides a timely reminder that von der Leyen is no big fan of scrutiny and accountability, having accumulated a negative track record over the past five years,” said Alberto Alemanno, professor in EU law at the École des hautes études commerciales de Paris (HEC Paris).
A change in her behaviour was “highly unlikely as her conception of power is extremely centralised, and not collegial, as required by the EU Treaties,” Alemanno told Brussels Signal.
“Given her track-record, MEPs should not be afraid to vote von der Leyen down, should they be unpersuaded by her political style and policy programme,” he added.
Legal experts said the ECJ’s ruling was an important step toward transparency, after von der Leyen’s Commission dealt with vaccines in a way many of them called troubling.
“It’s concerning that the EU Commission wished to redact the names of officials who negotiated contracts. It’s also concerning that indemnification was not disclosed,” said Robert Dougans, partner and head of dispute resolution at the London law firm Preiskel & Co.
“Given the serious conflicts of interests about the actions of ‘experts’ during the Covid pandemic the court’s decisions is a good step towards transparency,” Dougans told Brussels Signal.
Von der Leyen has hoped for support for the European Parliament’s Greens/EFA MEPs in securing a second mandate. Her first mandate was approved by MEPs with a small majority.
Somewhat awkwardly for the German, the ECJ case was brought by a group of Green MEPs, who were disappointed in their 2021 request for information on the European Commission’s deal with Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers.
With the EU “expected to undertake more joint procurements in areas like health and potentially defence,” the next European Commission must “adapt their handling of access to documents requests to be in line with today’s ruling”, warned Tilly Metz, who was among the Green MEPs who had fought to see the full vaccines contracts.
The European Commission, which said it “reserves its legal options”, will now have two months to decide whether to appeal the judgement.
