The European Commission is set to be forced to publish complete versions of its multi-billion euro contracts to buy Covid-19 vaccines after the lawyer to the EU’s top court urged it to throw out an appeal by the EU executive.
In a legal opinion published on Thursday (11 June), the advocate general at the European Court of Justice, Athanasios Rantos, said that a 2024 court ruling that requires the commission to disclose unredacted versions of the contracts should remain intact.
In July 2024, the EU’s top court ruled that the EU executive had not granted the public sufficiently broad access to the agreements for the purchase of Covid-19 vaccines.
The case against the commission was initially brought by five Green MEPs in 2021, requesting access to documents related to the joint purchases of Covid vaccines.
At the time, the commission had only shared heavily redacted versions of the Covid-19 vaccine purchase agreements, arguing that full disclosure would impinge on commercial confidentiality and that naming the officials who brokered the contracts would affect their right to privacy.
