The European Ombudsman, Teresa Anjinho, has highlighted “maladministration” and irregularities in the handling by the European Commission and its President, Ursula von der Leyen, of a request for public access to a text message sent by French President Emmanuel Macron to the President of the Commission concerning the EU-Mercosur trade agreement.
The Ombudsman asks the Commission to keep all future SMS exchanges between its Commissioners and Heads of State, Prime Ministers, and Ministers for a reasonable period of time, to allow for possible public scrutiny through access requests, according to a press release from the institution published on Friday 5 June.
In addition, the Commission should ensure that, on receipt of an application for access to documents, the document in question is kept until the application has been dealt with in full. “This would allow an independent body, such as the European Ombudsman or the Court of Justice of the EU, to verify if any refusal to grant access is justified”.
In early 2024, a journalist requested public access to the SMS in question. The Commission did not act on this request until a new application was submitted in July 2025. And the institution indicated that the message had been automatically deleted, as the ‘disappearing messages’ function had been activated on the President’s phone.
The Secretariat-General did not send out any reminders or take any further steps to monitor the application. Nor was it possible to determine whether the Commission had searched for the SMS as soon as it received the request or only did so a year later.
More information: https://aeur.eu/f/m7m (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)