"The revelation comes in the midst of concerns around a possible multibillion-dollar agreement between Pfizer and the European Union (EU) for COVID vaccinations."
"EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova said in the letter, “The Commission can confirm that the search undertaken by the President’s cabinet for relevant text messages corresponding to the request for access to documents has not yielded any results.”"
"Von der Leyen and Bourla exchanged SMS while a deal for COVID vaccinations was being finalized, which was disclosed in May 2021. According to Von der Leyen’s account to The New York Times, she and Bourla were discussing the agreement over text messages."
"Following a journalist’s denial of a freedom of information request for the texts, Emily O’Reilly of the European Ombudsman concluded that the Commission had not made any effort to locate the documents. Later, the Commission claimed that because the documents were “short-lived,” it did not think they were subject to EU transparency laws."