Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla declined for the second time an invitation from the European Parliament’s special committee on Covid-19, which wanted to hear his version on negotiations with the European Commission to sign contracts for the purchase of vaccines against the disease caused by Sars-CoV-2. The news was announced via social media by the president of the special commission, the Belgian socialist Kathleen van Brempt (Vooruit, S&D group).
For the president, the unwillingness shown by both the US pharmaceutical company and the von der Leyen Commission to remedy the “lack of transparency” on the negotiations indicates that the “role of the European Parliament” is not respected and casts “a shadow which the need was felt on the success of the European vaccine strategy”.
Transparency, recalls van Brempt, is “essential” to ensure citizens’ trust in the European institutions and is “crucial” to strengthen the “resilience” of the EU. The Covi commission, as it is called in EU jargon, will continue to raise these “concerns” and take “necessary steps” to ensure that the public is given “full transparency” on the matter.
By refusing for the second time to come to the European Parliament’s special commission to talk about the negotiations with the Commission on contracts for anti-Covid vaccines, Pfizer’s CEO showed “arrogance”, to which the EU institutions should give a ” adequate response”, says the head of delegation of Forza Italia in Brussels, Fulvio Martusciello.
“For the second time in less than two months – he says – Albert Bourla, CEO of the US multinational Pfizer, which together with the German BioNTech produced the anti-Covid vaccine purchased in huge quantities by the European Commission, refuses confrontation with the European parliamentarians “. For Martusciello “Bourla’s decision is all the more serious after the admission of the company spokeswoman on the lack of efficacy testing of vaccines against infections, and while an investigation by the European Parliament is underway on the purchase of vaccines, purchased by negotiation private with Bourla himself”.
“The CEO of Pfizer – continues the blue exponent – must respect the European Parliament, an expression of 500 million EU citizens, and come and testify before the deputies. There are no exemptions and there is no special law regime for We expect – he concludes – an adequate response from the European Commission and from Parliament itself in the face of this act of arrogance”.
