The Court of Justice of the European Union has just ruled that the European Commission was wrong to reject a request from the New York Times to access messages between Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla from Jan. 1, 2021 and May 11, 2022. “Pfizergate” has been wound up to represent the EU’s issues with accountability at its top levels…
Co-conspirators used to firing FoIs will be familiar with the case:
“The Court notes that the Commission’s replies regarding the text messages requested throughout the procedure are based either on assumptions or on changing or imprecise information. By contrast, Ms Stevi and The New York Times have produced relevant and consistent evidence describing the existence of exchanges, in the form of text messages in particular, between the President of the Commission and the CEO of Pfizer in the context of the procurement of vaccines by the Commission from that company during the COVID-19 pandemic. They have thus succeeded in rebutting the presumption of non-existence and of non-possession of the requested documents.”
The Commission has lost on all counts in the ruling – the case was brought to the ECJ in January 2023. Two months to appeal now…
US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent is in Riyadh today after climbing down on tariffs with China. Speaking at the Saudi-US Investment Forum on future trade deals with other countries, Bessent didn’t exactly give good news for the EU. He said:
“On my side of the world things are going very well. I think the US and Europe may be a bit slower. My personal belief is Europe may have a collective action problem. The Italians want something that’s different than the French. But I’m sure at the end of the day we will reach a satisfactory conclusion.”
That’s after President Trump said yesterday that “the European Union is in many ways nastier than China. We have all the cards. They treated us very unfairly.” Meanwhile, Downing Street still refuses to accept that the US-UK trade deal was a Brexit benefit. All as Starmer gears up for major concessions at the EU surrender summit next week…
Vice President J.D. Vance has just finished talking to Wolfgang Ischinger at the MSC’s Munich Leaders Meeting in Washington D.C., in which European industrial failure received an earful:
“There is this fear that we have when we look at some of our European friends, and I made this point at the first Munich security conference I ever went to, that when I looked at Germany 10, 15, 20 years ago one of the things that the Germans were very good about is that they were they had kept the industrial strength of their economy consistent with the first world standard of living, but now what we see in Europe is a lot of our European friends are de-industrialising at the very moment where we’re all seeing the hard power underpinning or the economic underpinning of real hard power requires very strong and powerful industry.”
Vance pointed out that it is fine for Europe to disagree with the US but this “is an area where we’re fundamentally right and I think it’s it’s gratifying to see so many of our European friends recognise that and recognise that Europe does really have to play a bigger role in continental defense.” In an update the VP also said Russia was “asking for too much” to end the war in Ukraine. Ischinger tried to point out German efforts to lift the debt brake on defence spending, to a muted response from Vance…
The European Commission is meanwhile busy suing five of the EU’s member states for non-compliance with its Digital Services Act. An unserious bloc…
The EU has approved retaliatory tariffs on the US after votes. Duties of between 10% and 25% will be placed on products including tobacco, poultry, steel, aluminium, and motorcycles. 26 out of 27 voted in favour – Hungary against. 15 were required for the motion to pass…
The tariffs are worth €22 billion. The Commission previously plotted tariffs on more goods worth €26 billion – threats from Trump to impost 200% tariffs on EU alcohol products put paid to plans to tariff American bourbon. The Commission is still to respond to additional 25% car tariffs and 20% on EU goods…
Brexiteers will be sending up the bat signal as fresh reports from Bloomberg reveal the UK is on track to secure a major ‘reset’ deal with the EU by May. Starmer’s major shift back to the bloc has been the cornerstone of his foreign policy since he became PM…
President Trump’s tariff announcement has been seized upon as an excuse for deepening UK-EU cooperation. Government officials from both sides now indicate that a defence and security pact is likely to be finalised at the EU-UK summit in London on May 19th. Meanwhile, talks over fishing rights – which the EU has long been pushing for a hard cave-in – are ramping up, with a deal either signed or committed to at the summit. Those 92 EU surrender staff have been busy…
Labour is also pressing ahead with efforts to secure an EU Youth Mobility Scheme, effectively reopening the door to free movement, despite the government’s repeated assurances that Britain would not rejoin the programme. A UK government spokesman said “we will not be providing a running commentary on talks when it comes to our dialogue with the EU.” Translation: Starmer’s road to rejoin is the bloc well underway…
Keir Starmer’s major reset and pivot back to Europe has been the cornerstone of his foreign policy since he became PM. Multiple trips to Brussels, cosying up to EU leaders and generally getting back on the EU circuit was pitched to business leaders as Labour’s big plan…
But it’s all come to nothing as the EU has decided to exclude British defence companies from its new €150 billion defence fund. The new Security Action for Europe (SAFE) mechanism has published its terms and includes a ‘buy European’ clause banning arms purchases from the UK, US and other non-EU countries. The French are suspected of having secured the exclusion of the UK as a shot in an ongoing separate row over fishing rights (part of Starmer’s re-opened EU settlement). Despite Starmer’s Ukraine diplomacy, standing shoulder to shoulder with Macron, the French have totally shafted him…
A distraught Labour source told the newspapers: “Europe needs Britain’s defence industry a bit more than the French need a few extra fish. It is astonishing how puerile the French are behaving. They have not grasped the enormity of the moment.” Welcome to the real world…
Lord Khan in the Telegraph: “I hope, and I say this in a non-pompous way, that the public service I do will bring rewards in this world and the hereafter,” he says. “I’m hoping the work I do is earning me Brownie points.”