A legal analysis published in Ars Aequi last week situates the General Court’s judgment in Stevi and the New York Times Company v Commission (commonly referred to as the ‘Pfizergate’ case) within the broader context of ‘alternative documents’ regimes in the Commission and Council of the EU. In this blog post, first author Andra Primavarus sets out the core argument.
Last year, the Court of Justice of the EU delivered its much-discussed judgment in the Stevi and the New York Times Company v Commission case. To recall, the case concerned a journalist’s request for access to text messages exchanged between Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during negotiations on COVID-19 procurement. While the Court annulled the Commission’s access denial decision on grounds of breach of the fundamental right to good administration, thereby affirming the rule of law in action, the judgment nonetheless represents a Pyrrhic victory for transparency.
In this article, we argue that the case exposes deep structural deficiencies in the EU access to documents regime under Regulation 1049/2001, particularly regarding informal and app-based communications treated by institutions as ‘alternative documents’ falling outside the scope of public access rules. As such, drawing parallels with the Council’s systematic handling of informal documents bearing the so-called ‘WK’ predicate (an informal internal shorthand for ‘working documents’), in the article we demonstrate that the problem is not isolated to the Commission but reflects a wider institutional pattern. Although Regulation 1049/2001 defines documents broadly, the unspecificity of the definition, combined with underdeveloped record-keeping standards and low chances of enforceability and redress, allow EU institutions to evade transparency obligations.
The contribution concludes that Regulation 1049/2001 is increasingly ill-equipped to deal with the modern means of communication and administration. Without clearer rules on the classification, registration, and preservation of informal communications, and stronger follow-up mechanisms to ensure compliance with court rulings, the EU’s transparency framework risks becoming dependent on institutional convenience rather than democratic accountability. The Pfizergate judgment thus marks a critical juncture: either another episode of damage control, or the beginning of a substantive change in how EU institutions treat access to documents.
The article, entitled ‘Upholding EU transparency law in cases of ‘alternative documents’, can be accessed via the Ars Aequi website.
