The European Commission has checked and found no important stored messages related to the request for access to information by the "New York Times" regarding direct negotiations between EC President Ursula von der Leyen and the head of pharmaceutical manufacturer "Pfizer" for the supply of over one billion doses of the Covid vaccine worth several billion euros.
This was announced today by a spokesperson for the Commission at a press conference in response to a question related to today's ruling by the Court of Justice of the EU, quoted by BTA.
As BTA reported, the European Court of Justice rejected the EC's refusal to provide the requested information.
The EC checked whether there were registered documents affected by the request and found no data, the spokesperson said. Then we made sure whether such documents could exist without being registered and we also found no such data, he added. I am not saying that messages were deleted, the spokesperson pointed out in response to a question.
Today's court ruling does not question the EC's rules for registering documents, but states that the Commission must provide a more detailed explanation under what circumstances it does not register documents, the spokesperson said. He expressed hope that no further steps would be taken by the complainant.
The spokesman cited rules that Commission staff should not use short message exchanges to discuss important information, and when necessary, they should forward these messages to an email address to be registered in the EC's document management system.
The EU Court of Justice said today that this was not sufficiently explained and that we would comply with its request, the spokesman said. He added that no changes were envisaged to the EC's document management system. We would introduce more detailed rules for the implementation of the existing requirements, he added, but did not specify whether the Commission would appeal the EC's ruling within the statutory two-month period.