As the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control (CONT) met with Sandra Gallina, the European Commission’s Director General for Health and Food Safety, on Friday 1 October, several MEPs raised the issue of the opacity of the European procurement process for Covid-19 vaccines.
There were renewed calls for information on the amounts disbursed by the Commission under Advance Purchase Agreements (APAs) with pharmaceutical companies and whether the Commission would consider providing access to an “uncensored” version of these agreements.
In the contracts published at that stage, entire paragraphs, including the amounts involved, had been crossed out.
“We know that we have given access to reduced contracts”, replied Sandra Gallina, reiterating that the decision had been taken at the highest level and in accordance with the confidentiality clauses in the contracts. These arguments have already been put forward by the Commission on many occasions and were detailed once again at the Parliament in Strasbourg a few weeks ago (see EUROPE 12793/11).
However, the EU official assured MEPs that the Commission had “found the means” to transmit this “very sensitive commercial information” securely to the European Court of Auditors.
An audit by the Court into advance purchase agreements and the effectiveness of the Commission’s procurement in the context of the pandemic is underway, Ms Gallina announced, adding that the Commission was cooperating fully with the process.
The Director General said she was “very happy” to be able to “show to the taxpayers the way we have used the money”.
“Obvious tax avoidance”
On this point, Ms Gallina was challenged by the French MEP Michèle Rivasi (Greens/EFA).
Drawing on the work of researcher Vincent Kiezebrink, carried out for the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) on the basis of a leaked contract between the Commission contract and Moderna, Ms Rivasi pointed out that the Commission had allocated €318 million to this company in December 2020 and that this money had been paid into the company’s bank account in the Swiss canton of Basel.
It is “one of the most notorious tax havens in the world. And in this canton of Basel, the company Moderna does not manufacture vaccines. Nor do its contractors”, said the MEP, denouncing “obvious tax avoidance”.
“Was the Commission aware that it was complicit in tax avoidance? And in the framework of the second contract signed with Moderna (see EUROPE 12608/27), have you asked the company to pay taxes in European countries and in the canton of Valais, Switzerland, where it conducts its production activities?”, asked Ms Rivasi.
In her response, Sandra Gallina denied that the Commission could be described as “complicit”, saying that these issues had not been addressed. However, the account provided by the company was “obviously checked”, she said, adding that if the Commission had been certain that something was wrong, it would have taken immediate action with the company to resolve the problem.
On the other hand, the Commission representative said she would take note of Ms Rivasi’s remark with “great interest”, so that “ things will go well “. “From my point of view, this is a legitimate question. At the same time, it was not in the context of a vaccine purchase that I could have investigated tax havens”, she added.
To consult Vincent Kiezebrink’s investigation: https://bit.ly/39T3VJv (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)