Deleted messages: Parliament asks for von der Leyen's SMS

Enlarge image

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (2021)

Photo: YVES HERMAN / REUTERS

The EU Commission continues to refuse to save SMS messages and conversations from services such as WhatsApp or Signal and thus make them accessible to the public.

This emerges from a response from Commission Vice President Věra Jourová to an official question from the European Parliament.

The Czech repeats the Commission's previous terminology, that SMS and instant messages are not archived as a matter of principle - because they are "short-lived" and contain "no important information" about measures or decisions by the Commission.

According to Jourová, this is what the Commission's internal rules say - which, however, the authority has given itself.

The Czech only publicly admitted in mid-November that these rules were outdated.

Their modernization is already under way, said Jourová.

This is to take account of the fact that “the type of communication is changing”.

The Commission's current directives are not only outdated, but according to legal experts they may also violate EU law.

Because the regulation currently in force states that the Commission must grant far-reaching public access to all documents in its possession – in whatever form.

The law does not mention a difference between e-mails and instant messages.

According to a report by SPIEGEL, Dutch MEP Sophie in 't Veld asked the EU Commission to confirm that its guidelines contradict the regulation - and asked whether the Commission would end this situation "immediately".

However, Jourová has now replied that the internal rules do correspond to the regulation and that short messages do not even fall within its scope.

In other words, everything is fine.

In practice, this means that the Commission can destroy its SMS, WhatsApp and other communications at will, without anyone knowing what was deleted, let alone what was on it.

When asked, the commission initially did not answer whether the revision of the internal guidelines promised by Jourová is off the table or whether it will come after all.

Where are von der Leyen's messages to the Pfizer boss?

Social Democrat in 't Veld put another pithy question to the Commission. It was about an exchange between Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Albert Bourla, head of the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer. According to a report by the New York Times, the two exchanged text messages for more than a month to thread the contract announced in May for the delivery of up to 1.8 billion doses of corona vaccine.

This would clearly contradict the Commission's assertion that short messages are fundamentally unimportant for its work.

In 't Veld wanted to know if the messages had been deleted - and if so, based on which criteria.

However, Jourová did not even address this question in her answer.

A commission spokeswoman also declined to answer a question from SPIEGEL in November about the whereabouts of the news.

It's not the first time that von der Leyen's short messages have made headlines.

At the end of 2019, it became known that SMS messages had been deleted on two of her work cell phones during her time as Federal Minister of Defense - which brought von der Leyen a criminal complaint and trouble with a committee of inquiry in the Bundestag, which had requested the texts as evidence.

"This commission has a problem with democracy," says in 't Veld.

'She obviously doesn't feel accountable to anyone.

She disregards Parliament and the electorate.«