Pfizergate: The Ursula von der Leyen / Pfizer SMS Affair

Introduction

In April 2021, New York Times journalist Matina Stevis-Gridneff published an investigation revealing that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had been conducting personal text-message negotiations with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. These private exchanges, reportedly spanning months, were described as instrumental in shaping the EU''s decision to purchase an additional 1.8 billion doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine — a contract ultimately valued at approximately €71 billion signed in May 2021.

The disclosure triggered a political and legal controversy that has persisted for years, intersecting questions of transparency, democratic accountability, and the concentration of executive power in EU institutions.

The Contract and the Texts

The EU had already executed an initial vaccine contract with Pfizer-BioNTech in late 2020. The second, far larger contract — negotiated in 2021 — was the subject of the texts. Von der Leyen and Bourla reportedly exchanged messages over the course of several weeks in which the terms of the expanded agreement were discussed directly at the leadership level, bypassing the Commission''s normal procurement processes and the involvement of the joint negotiating team established for vaccine purchases.

The texts were not disclosed through normal document systems. When FOI requests were filed — by the NYT itself and subsequently by MEPs and civil society organisations — the Commission took the position that the messages did not constitute official "documents" under EU transparency regulations and therefore did not need to be disclosed or retained.

The Ombudsman Finding

EU Ombudsman Emily O''Reilly, whose office handles complaints about EU institutional conduct, investigated the Commission''s handling of the FOI requests. In January 2022 she issued a finding of maladministration — a formal term in EU law meaning the Commission had failed to meet required standards of good administration. The finding stated that the Commission had not made adequate efforts to search for and retrieve the relevant messages, and that the position that short text messages fall outside transparency rules was not tenable.

The maladministration finding does not carry legal enforcement power, but it constitutes an official institutional determination that the Commission''s conduct was improper.

The EPPO Investigation

In January 2023 the European Public Prosecutor''s Office — the EU''s independent anti-corruption prosecutorial body — announced it had opened a criminal investigation into the vaccine contract negotiations. The EPPO has jurisdiction over offences affecting EU financial interests, including fraud, corruption, and misuse of EU funds.

The investigation is ongoing. No charges have been publicly confirmed as of the date of this entry. The EPPO has not disclosed the specific legal theories under investigation, but the focus is understood to relate to procurement irregularities and the undisclosed text-message negotiations.

The ECJ Ruling (May 2025)

The European Court of Justice issued a ruling in May 2025 in litigation brought by MEPs seeking disclosure of the texts. The ruling partially ordered the Commission to release relevant communications, finding that the institution''s broad claim that informal messages fall outside transparency obligations was not legally sustainable in all circumstances. The ruling represents a significant, if partial, victory for transparency advocates.

The Commission''s response to the ECJ ruling and the extent of any actual disclosure remain subjects of ongoing legal and political proceedings.

Political Context

Von der Leyen was nominated for a second term as Commission President and re-confirmed by the European Parliament in June 2024, following the EU parliamentary elections. The Pfizergate affair was a significant campaign issue in some member states but did not prevent her re-confirmation, with her coalition holding sufficient support in the Parliament.

Critics have argued that the affair illustrates structural accountability gaps in EU executive institutions — specifically, the degree to which the Commission President can make major financial decisions through informal channels without leaving a discoverable paper trail subject to normal oversight.

Verdict

Partially true. The core factual claims are documented: von der Leyen did conduct undisclosed private text negotiations with Bourla; the Commission did refuse FOI disclosure on questionable grounds; the EU Ombudsman formally found maladministration; and the EPPO has opened a criminal investigation. What remains unconfirmed is whether the conduct rises to criminal corruption — that determination remains with the EPPO. The affair represents confirmed institutional opacity and confirmed maladministration; the criminal dimension is under active investigation.

What the European Court of Auditors Actually Found

Before the General Court ever ruled on the missing texts, the EU's own independent auditor had already examined the procurement itself. In Special Report 19/2022, published 12 September 2022, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) reviewed how the Commission negotiated and signed its COVID-19 vaccine contracts, including the 1.8-billion-dose Pfizer-BioNTech agreement reached in May 2021. The ECA confirmed that preliminary negotiations for that contract were conducted outside the normal Joint Negotiation Team structure that had handled every earlier vaccine deal, and it criticized the Commission for keeping large parts of the contracting process — including pricing and liability terms — confidential, and for not adequately documenting how the final terms were reached.

This is an important, and often blurred, distinction. The ECA report is a performance and transparency audit, not a fraud or corruption inquiry. Its conclusion was that oversight of the process could not be properly assessed because so little was documented — not that money changed hands improperly, and not that von der Leyen or anyone else personally benefited. The report is direct evidence that Commission-level opacity around the Pfizer deal predates the SMS controversy and was independently confirmed by the EU's own auditors, but it stops well short of the corruption allegations that later attached to the story.

The Belgian Criminal Complaint — and Its Collapse

Separately from the EU-level Ombudsman and court proceedings, a Belgian citizen, Frédéric Baldan, took the corruption allegation directly into a national criminal court. In April 2023 Baldan filed a criminal complaint with an investigating judge in Liège, accusing von der Leyen (along with Bourla, Pfizer and BioNTech) of usurpation of public functions, destruction of public documents, illegal interest-taking and corruption. Roughly a thousand other individuals and several minor political parties later joined the action as civil parties.

That complaint did not survive judicial review. On 21 January 2025, the Liège appeals chamber (chambre des mises en accusation) declared the complaint inadmissible, ruling that Baldan lacked the legal standing to bring it — a threshold procedural finding that also extinguished the roughly 1,000 joined claims without the substance of the corruption allegations ever being examined. Baldan appealed to Belgium's Court of Cassation, the country's supreme court, which on 22 October 2025 rejected the final appeal, permanently closing the case after roughly three years in the Belgian system.

This matters for calibrating the theory: a national court system did examine a formal corruption complaint against von der Leyen over the vaccine texts, and it ended not with acquittal-on-the-merits but with a procedural dismissal — no Belgian court has found, or even substantively evaluated, evidence of corruption. The EPPO's own EU-level investigation, opened in 2023, remains open with no charges filed as of the most recent public reporting, and the office has said it will not disclose further detail while the inquiry continues. Years of active scrutiny by multiple bodies have not produced a finding of criminal wrongdoing.

What the General Court Ruling Did and Did Not Decide

It is worth being precise about the scope of the May 2025 General Court judgment, because it is frequently cited as though it vindicated the corruption narrative. The court's ruling in Case T-36/23 (Stevi and The New York Times v Commission) was an access-to-documents case under EU Regulation 1049/2001. The judges found that the Commission had not given a "plausible explanation" for why it did not possess the requested text messages, that its account of what searches were carried out was vague and inconsistent, and that it had failed to clarify whether messages were deleted and, if so, deliberately or automatically.

That is a serious institutional finding — the court effectively said the Commission's story about the missing texts does not hold up — but it is a finding about administrative conduct and transparency-law compliance, not a finding about the content of the texts or about any exchange of value between von der Leyen and Bourla. The court did not rule that corruption occurred, did not order any individual's conduct assessed for criminal liability, and did not have before it the contents of the disputed messages (which, per the Commission's own account, cannot be located). The Commission did not appeal, and the judgment became final, obliging the Commission to issue a new, more detailed decision on the original access request — but that follow-on decision, as of the most recent reporting, had not resolved whether the texts exist in recoverable form.

The Ombudsman's Parallel Track

The Ombudsman inquiry that preceded the court case reached its formal conclusion on 14 July 2022, when Emily O'Reilly confirmed her finding of maladministration. Her office's language is instructive for calibrating the claim: she said the Commission's handling "leaves the regrettable impression of an EU institution that is not forthcoming on matters of significant public interest" and called the episode "a wake-up call for all EU institutions about ensuring accountability in an era of instant messaging." She recommended that work-related text and instant messages be treated as registrable official documents going forward, and that technical means be found to record them. Notably, her findings and recommendations are about institutional record-keeping practice — they do not allege, and are not evidence of, corrupt intent.

Political Accountability Has Also Been Tested

Beyond the courts, the affair was put directly to a democratic accountability test. On 10 July 2025, the European Parliament held a formal censure (no-confidence) motion against von der Leyen — the first such motion faced by a Commission president in more than a decade — brought by a group of hard-right MEPs that cited the Pfizer texts alongside separate allegations about EU funds and election interference. The motion was defeated decisively, 360 votes against to 175 in favour with 18 abstentions, meaning a large majority of directly elected MEPs, after the scandal had been public for four years and after the General Court's adverse ruling, declined to remove her over it. This does not settle the underlying facts, but it is a documented data point on how elected representatives weighed the affair when given a formal opportunity to act on it.

Weighing the Documented Record

Putting these threads together supports, rather than undermines, the partially-true verdict. Multiple independent bodies — the European Court of Auditors, the European Ombudsman, and the General Court — have each, through their own separate processes, confirmed real institutional failures: bypassed procurement channels, undocumented negotiations, an implausible account of missing records, and a refusal to disclose that did not survive legal challenge. That much is settled and well-sourced.

What has not happened, despite three-plus years of parallel scrutiny across at least four different institutional and judicial channels (Ombudsman, ECA, EPPO, and the Belgian courts), is any adjudicated finding that a bribe, kickback, or other corrupt exchange took place. The one criminal complaint that formally alleged corruption was dismissed on procedural standing grounds without its substance being tested. The EPPO investigation, which does have jurisdiction to reach such a finding, remains open and has filed no charges. And the actual contents of the von der Leyen–Bourla messages — the one piece of direct evidence that could confirm or refute the strongest version of the claim — still have not been produced by the Commission. Readers should treat the transparency failure as established fact and the corruption allegation as a live, unresolved question rather than a proven conclusion.