The last year has not been good for the European Union’s image. The Qatargate scandal rumbles on. So far, apart from various functionaries and hangers-on, three MEPs, including a vice president of the European parliament, and one ex-MEP have been implicated in the scandal. Last week, however, yet another festering sleaze scandal broke, this time over the EU’s purchase of Covid vaccines from Pfizer. The scandal is less serious in that no one suggests it involves actual bribery. But it is nevertheless rather more embarrassing because it embraces Commission president Ursula von der Leyen herself.
At issue is the billions paid by the bloc to Pfizer for the vaccines. In 2020 Pfizer had delivered a first batch at the stiffish price of €15.50 a pop. In early 2021 the EU needed more, and got the vaccines – this time at €19.50. Eyebrows were raised. Ominously, rumours were swirling of repeated exchanges of private text messages exchanged shortly before the second deal between her and the CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, on issues including the price to be paid.
Journalistic requests for records of these under EU freedom of information laws were consistently stonewalled. The excuses ranged from privacy, to assertions that no conversations of this kind were ever officially recorded and that freedom of information did not cover this kind of data anyway, and regretful suggestions that they might by now have been deleted anyway. Suspicions were raised further when the wall of silence continued despite a withering report from the EU Ombudsman in January 2022 and veiled criticism from the EU Court of Auditors later last year. Last week the New York Times, one of the papers that originally ran the story in 2021 and had been quietly digging since then, lost patience. It has now sued the EU in its own court to force it to reveal the information, and publicised this fact.
Will the exchanges now come to light? To be honest, probably not. They will presumably have been shared, if at all, among a very small number of the Euro top brass. Unless someone still has the messages and chooses to abandon the EU omerta, the betting must be that all we will get is a judgment that says the messages ought to have been revealed, that reasonable steps should be taken to look for them, but that if they aren’t there then regrettably not much can be done.
And the messages may well indeed not be there – they could have been wiped. It’s worth remembering that about four years ago it appeared that during von der Leyen’s time as German Minister of Defence messages mysteriously disappeared from her phone which would have been useful in probing some rather questionable IT procurement for the German military. Von der Leyen denied that the messages had anything to do with the procurement contracts.
The result is that allegations of mismanagement of Covid procurement will remain just that – allegations. Critics of von der Leyen will continue to suggest that this looks like a fishy sweetheart deal: supporters will say that she was doing her best to serve European interests against grasping Big Pharma who had the bloc over a barrel. Who is right we may well never know.
The real effect, however, will be on the EU’s reputation and political clout, and this could well be big. Within Europe, Brussels is already politically beleaguered. It faces the uncomfortable truth that it can no longer count on the unconditional loyalty of even older member states to the European idea: even in Italy there are signs of incipient scepticism from the government of Giorgia Meloni. It also needs to rejuvenate the idea of a European identity among ordinary voters and kindle an interest in elections to the European parliament equal to that in national votes. The apparent inability of Brussels to keep its own house in order, or to come clean when skulduggery is alleged, can only make things worse in both respects.
And this is without taking into account eastern Europe. The hard-line approach of both the Commission and European Parliament to Poland and Hungary, with their unwillingness to toe the EU line or admit the unconditional supremacy of the EU order, depends partly on allegations of endemic corruption and cronyism within those states. With both Parliament and now the president of the Commission themselves subject to allegations of shady deals and deliberate obfuscation, any political ascendancy Brussels may once have had is disappearing by the day. Viktor Orbán in Hungary has already, and rightly, pointed out that members of an EU Parliament mired in Qatargate are hardly in a good position to attack his own country. He has every justification now in saying much the same thing to the Commission in respect of this scandal.
At least in Britain we have a remedy against a governing class we see as guilty of cronyism and being on the make. We can vote it out, as we may well do next year. With the semi-democratic EU this is more problematical, and the political results may well be less predictable and more long-lasting. One thing is crystal clear: whatever the truth may be, we will not hear the last of the EU Covid scandal for some time.
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