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Commission chief von der Leyen: SMS "in principle excluded" from document capture?
Photo: John Thys/AP
The EU Commission and its boss Ursula von der Leyen are getting new trouble because of their handling of SMS and chat messages.
On Friday, the EU ombudsman published an investigation report into allegedly untraceable messages between von der Leyen and Albert Bourla, the head of the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
In it, Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly sharply criticizes the Commission's behavior - and urges them to look seriously for the news.
The New York Times reported in April 2021 that von der Leyen and Bourla had exchanged short messages for more than a month to thread the contract announced a little later for the delivery of up to 1.8 billion doses of corona vaccine.
A Brussels journalist later asked the Commission to release the news as part of an official request.
The Commission, however, stated that it did not possess the correspondence.
SMS and other short messages are "by nature short-lived and in principle do not contain important information about the policy, activities or decisions of the commission," it said in a written reply.
Short messages are therefore “in principle excluded” from document collection.
Clear case of »mismanagement«
The Commission apparently also used this trick to conceal the whereabouts of von der Leyen's SMS.
According to O'Reilly's report, the commission did not ask von der Leyen's cabinet to search for the text message exchange with Bourla, but for "documents that meet the commission's internal archiving criteria."
However, according to these rules, which the Commission has set itself, SMS messages are not recorded at all – see above.
This means that "no attempt was made to find out whether text messages existed," O'Reilly said.
It was a clear case of "mismanagement".
The Irish woman even indirectly accuses the commission of simply illegally handling SMS and short messages.
"Brief messages clearly fall under EU Transparency Law, so relevant messages should be archived," says O'Reilly.
"Any claims to the contrary are not credible." The content and not the form of a document determines whether there should be a right of access.
The Commission should now ask von der Leyen's office again - and this time seriously - to look for von der Leyen's correspondence with Bourla.
So far, however, the commission has flatly refused to even confirm the existence of the news.
The Dutch MEP Sophie in 't Veld also received no answer from the Commission when asked about the whereabouts of von der Leyen's SMS.
Routine bulk wipes
Instead, its Vice President Věra Jourová announced that the authority's internal rules on not archiving short messages were legal.
That seems strange, since Jourová himself only publicly described the same rules as outdated in November and promised to modernize them.
Von der Leyen's SMS messages are also not an isolated case.
When Dutch tax expert Martijn Nouwen asked the Commission to release documents on EU countries' tax deals, she also replied that it could only release what had been archived under its controversial internal rules.
It turned out that the Commission not only does not archive SMS and chat messages, but also routinely deletes mass e-mails.
