In an order handed down on Tuesday 4 February (Case C-632/24 P-R), the Vice-President of the Court of Justice of the European Union has provisionally suspended the European Commission’s obligation to disclose the team responsible for negotiating the advance purchase of Covid-19 vaccines between 2020 and 2021, pending the Court’s ruling on the substance of the case.
The Commission has appealed to have set aside the judgment of the EU General Court of July 2024 which required it to disclose the identities of the members of the negotiating team for the Covid-19 vaccine purchase contracts (joined cases T-689/21 and T-761/21 – see EUROPE 13455/6). At the same time, it applied for a stay of execution of the contested judgment of the General Court.
The Vice-President of the General Court approved the Commission’s application, pending the judgment of the Court of Justice on the substance of the case. In his view, the case raises relevant legal issues. Urgency is also established because disclosure of the identities of the members of the negotiating team could cause serious and irreparable harm to the persons concerned. In addition, if the Commission’s application for a stay of execution were to be refused, the appeal before the Court would lose most of its relevance as regards the question of whether the Commission could refuse access to the data, which had already been irreversibly disclosed. Finally, in this context, the balance of interests favours the Commission’s application for a stay of execution of the contested judgment, according to the Vice-President of the General Court. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)