December 2019, Ursula Von der Leyen gives a mission letter to the one she chose to defend “values and transparency”, the Czech Věra Jourová. Five years later, on the eve of European elections, the President of the European Commission no longer makes transparency a matter of state and is seeking a second term, without stopping at the “dispute” which opposes her to all European journalists who are interested: the details of its negotiations with Pfizer to ensure Europeans have enough vaccines against Covid. Or rather the details of his SMS and emails exchanged directly with the CEO.
This is not a symbolic battle that only the New York Times, which was the first to understand the importance of these SMS messages, is able to lead financially. It’s a fundamental and very simple question: can a European leader spend 30 billion euros of public money without ever being held accountable? Does whatever-the-cost – access to unlimited public resources in defiance of budgetary rules and framework established as a political doctrine – take precedence over transparency?
Ever more spendthrift, Member States are going to collect every cent from their citizens by accepting that, at the very top of the pyramid, no one is accountable? A wave of the hand generally brushes aside all these questions. A shrug. Sometimes the accusation of populism. And then, this is not new: the former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was already a great fan of telephone cleaning, of which she had already convinced Mrs. Von der Leyen, then Minister of Defense. Courted by Uber, Neelie Kroes removed everything that could put her in difficulty.
In Qatargate, the former vice-president of the European Parliament, Éva Kaïlí, will try to eliminate the procedure which made it possible to find thousands of euros at her home for formal defects in the investigation, which did not take into account her immunity as a Member of the European Parliament. And in a month, all these beautiful people will be moaning in the media at the horror of the surge of populist parties, surfing on vanished confidence…
This article was written for the magazine edition of Paperjam , published on April 24, 2024. The content of the magazine is produced exclusively for the magazine. It is published on the site to contribute to the complete Paperjam archives.
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