Hungary pressures EU to reveal secret Pfizer vaccine texts after court ruling
The European Commission must respect the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union and make all communications on the orders of coronavirus vaccines between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla public without delay, the foreign minister said in Luxembourg on Wednesday.
Péter Szijjártó said after the meeting of the foreign ministers of the Council of Europe that Von der Leyen belonged to the European People’s Party, which had the opposition Tisza Party as a member, and described her as a “Hungarophobe politician making severely anti-Hungarian decisions”, according to a ministry statement.
Szijjártó Szijjártó said this was the reason why the EC had been “compulsively and continually harassing Hungary, trying to carry out various procedures against our country.”
“And it is Ursula von der Leyen who repeatedly expressed damning opinions about the state of Hungarian democracy, transparency, and respect for law. The same Ursula von der Leyen who has been found trying to order Pfizer vaccines in a very suspicious way, questionable economically and in every other sense, by text message at a time when the lives of millions of Europeans were at stake,” he added.
“And the same Ursula von der Leyen is keeping communication between herself and the Pfizer chief a secret on ordering vaccines capable of protecting Europeans from Covid,” he said. “I believe that from now on, President Von der Leyen is the last person from whom we are willing to accept and consider any criticism about Hungary’s domestic affairs,” he added.
“What financial issues did they talk about? Why did the Commission pay what it paid, and why were the vaccines arriving late in Europe? Why did the health service system drift to the edge of failure in several countries? How is it possible that Europe was among the last in terms of vaccines?” he asked.
Hungary’s EU affairs minister has welcomed a ruling passed by the EU cour,t according to which the European Commission should have made public the text messages it had exchanged with Covid vaccine supplier Pfizer during the pandemic.
Minister welcomes EU court decision on EC-Pfizer text message exchange
The court has made such a significant decision that “it is visible even from the Moon,” János Bóka said on Facebook. “The Commission has until now stated that those messages did not even exist”, the minister said. “But as it now turns out, they in fact did, and the EC should release those,” he added.
“We, however, still don’t know what those messages contain. We don’t know what happened around placing an order for the purchase of 1.8 billion doses of vaccines and the payment of several tens of billions of euros,” said Bóka.
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