Surely just a coincidence!
As regular readers are well aware, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is facing a number of legal challenges over the Pfizergate scandal, including from the New York Times, the governments of Hungary and Poland, a Belgian lobbyist and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, or EPPO. In early April, we discussed the possibility that her reelection campaign may be over-shadowed by these multiple lawsuits as well as other corruption allegations. At that time, the EPPO had just proposed taking over a Belgian criminal probe into the highly opaque vaccine negotiations between von der Leyen and the CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla.
Since then, the Commission, it seems, has gone on the offensive. According to an article published earlier this week by POLITICO EU, the EU executive plans to reduce the EPPO’s funding, prompting the EPPO, in a rare move, to threaten to sue the Commission. Founded in 2017 with the mission of “investigating transnational and complex financial crimes, notably serious organised crimes and money laundering flows,” the EPPO last year launched more than 200 fraud investigations related to the EU-wide Recovery and Resilience Facility, which has provided €800 billion of EU cash to help support post-COVID economic recovery.
Also last year, the EPPO launched an investigation into the Commission’s procurement of 4.5 billion COVID-19 vaccines — for a continent of 450 million people (I’ll let readers do the maths) — after the Commission had refused to provide EU auditors with records of its preliminary discussions with Pfizer, whether in the form of minutes, names of experts consulted, agreed terms, or other evidence. The EPPO has warned that the Commission’s plans to slash its budget will make it difficult for its prosecutors to continuing fulfilling their duties. From the POLITICO EU piece:
On April 9, Laura Codruța Kövesi, who heads the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) — tasked with investigating serious financial crimes affecting the EU’s interests — took the unusual step of launching a so-called “amicable settlement procedure” with the Commission. This is the last legal step before litigation and if no agreement can be found, the fight could go as high as the EU’s General Court.
The prosecutors fear they will be unable to do their job properly if the Commission goes through with a plan to squeeze its budget — a move that was announced in February and came as a surprise, EPPO claims.
Kövesi’s letter was shared in early April with three senior officials from the Commission, according to the document obtained by POLITICO. In it, the EPPO chief alleges that the Commission is depriving it of the means to carry out its work effectively by putting pressure on its budget, notably on the amount spent on IT.
When EPPO was launched in summer 2021, the Commission agreed to provide IT facilities with no end date given. The Commission has now told EPPO it wants to withdraw the IT support. The amount of money involved is around€5 million, according to EPPO’s estimates.
“The unilateral decision … to terminate, on 31 December 2024, the provision of the mentioned services to the EPPO risks that the Union’s independent prosecution office will be in the impossibility to carry out its tasks and achieve its mission,” Kövesi wrote, adding that “it is incumbent on the Commission to abstain from any measure that could jeopardize the attainment of the Treaty objective entrusted to EPPO in combating crimes affecting the financial interests of the Union.”
In response to the EPPO’s letter, a Commission spokesperson said:
“The Commission has replied to EPPO within the designated period for an amicable settlement. In its reply, the Commission has expressed willingness to continue to support the IT services of EPPO for the foreseeable future under specific conditions. We cannot comment further.”
What Conditions?
What are the Commission’s “specific conditions”? Who knows? Presumably, Kövesi or someone else at the EPPO will soon find out in a private meeting — and certainly not by text message — if they haven’t already. As for the rest of us, we will probably never know. By all outward appearances, the Commission is sending a message to the EPPO to stay in its lane, and not ruffle any feathers at the Berlaymont, particularly those of the president as she prepares to secure a second term. Otherwise, the flow of funds will slow.
If that is indeed the case, it raises serious questions about the EPPO’s operational independence. That in turn throws up yet more questions about the state of the rule of law, democracy and judicial independence in the very heart of the EU, especially given how the Commission has been using judicial independence and rule of law issues (largely) as a pretext to withhold billions of euros of EU funds from Hungary over the past two years. In reality, the main reason for freezing the funds is President Viktor Orban’s unyielding opposition to project Ukraine, as Conor Gallagher explained in a previous post.
It is uncommon for an EU institution like the EPPO to threaten to sue the Commission, but according to the POLITICO EU piece, tensions have been building:
Through an open letter sent to MEPs and public remarks at the European Parliament, Kövesi has for weeks been asking the Commission to reevaluate its decision to cut a substantial part of the support it provides to the Luxembourg-based EPPO team, who have recently taken over a case looking into von der Leyen’s handling of Covid vaccine deals.
The “Pfizergate” story was first broken in April 2021 by the New York Times when it revealed that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had negotiated a contract for 1.8 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses during the pandemic with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in mobile phone texts. Those texts remain undisclosed to this day. They may have already been destroyed. In May 2021, the journalist Alexander Fanta tried to obtain a copy through an FOI request but the Commission refused.
Since then the New York Times has presented a legal complaint against VdL based on articles 41 and 42 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union — articles that recognise the right of access to the documents of the European Parliament, the European Council and the European Commission. In April 2023, Fedéric Baldan, a Belgian lobbyist specialising in EU-China trade relations, lodged a criminal complaint at the Lieges courthouse, accusing VdL of “interference in public functions”, “destruction of public documents” and “illegal conflicts of interests and corruption.”
A dozen other organisations, individuals, and even the countries of Hungary and Poland (under the previous PiS-led government), have joined his complaint. The governments of Poland and Hungary did so after Pfizer and its German vaccine partner, BioNtech, announced they were suing both countries over their refusal to take delivery of millions more doses of their COVID-19 vaccines, many of which would never be used. There have already been at least €4 billion worth of wasted vaccine doses in the EU.
More Questions Than Answers
In its investigation, the EPPO can theoretically seize phones and other relevant material from the Commission’s offices or in other countries in Europe. That doesn’t appear to have happened yet. In fact, it is unclear just how far the EPPO investigation has progressed. There are still far more questions than answers regarding this case…
Read the full article on Naked Capitalism
Nick Corbishley 