Beautiful Virgin Islands

Tuesday, Jul 22, 2025

EU yielded to commercial interests over COVID-19 vaccines, NGOs say

EU yielded to commercial interests over COVID-19 vaccines, NGOs say

The agreements signed between the European Commission and pharmaceutical companies to roll out COVID-19 vaccines offered significant long-term benefits to the corporations involved to the detriment of public health and global equality, research by NGOs has found.
“Private interests exerted undue influence over European policymakers during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in a crying lack of transparency on publicly funded vaccine contracts which left the public with more questions than answers," Rowan Dunn, EU Advocacy Coordinator at Global Health Advocates, a French NGO, has said.

Two reports released on Thursday and authored by Global Health Advocates and STOPAIDS, a UK-based non-profit, accuse the EU's executive of redacting contracts with pharmaceutical companies and accommodating industry requests on such things as pricing, intellectual property and confidentiality requirements in a bid to quickly roll out the vaccines for its population.

This was despite the fact that some of these confidentiality requirements weren’t consistent with EU legislation.

“Protecting commercial interests came at the expense of supporting policy interventions that could have increased global vaccine access, and which harmed transparency”, the report reads. “With an unaccountable driver, the public were taken for a ride”.

For Belgian MEP Marc Botenga (The Left), who is cited in the report, "there was no real transparency in the contract negotiations. On the contracts, there have been minor steps forward - under pressure."

“So, from the first contracts basically the Commission outsourced transparency, meaning they will give you what the company tells us we can give you. You are in a situation where the company decides”, he added.

EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly ruled maladministration on the part of the Commission last year after the EU's executive said it could not release text exchanges between its president, Ursula von der Leyen, and the CEO of Pfizer.

The Commission said following the request from the EU's watchdog for the messages to be released that they had not been kept as official EU documents because "due to their short-lived and ephemeral nature" text messages in general "do not contain important information relating to policies, activities and decisions of the Commission".

O’Reilly said then that the Commission's answer "leaves the regrettable impression of an EU institution that is not forthcoming on matters of significant public interest."

The NGOs' reports also concluded that the global vaccine rollout created levels of global inequality so great that many called it a “vaccine apartheid”.

While high-income countries largely had widespread access to vaccines and medical countermeasures for their populations, low and middle-income countries could not access the same conditions in their fight against Covid-19.

Global Health Advocates and STOPAIDS argue in the reports that this inequality can be explained by the fact that “commercial, economic and geopolitical” considerations were placed above global health considerations.

“When it came to our journey out of the pandemic the route toward equitable access could have been a direct one, but with Big Pharma in the driver’s seat choosing to follow private interests, access to vaccines for lower-income countries was likely denied," STOPAIDS' Advocacy Manager James Cold said.

Pharmaceutical companies sold the vast majority of their doses to the richest countries in the world - a strategy denounced as putting profits first, especially as companies wouldn’t allow poorer countries to produce the life-saving vaccine on their own because of intellectual property rules.

Laid down in trade deals, these allowed pharma corporations to operate as monopolies, with no responsibility to share the knowledge they owned, despite how much society needed it, the reports stated.

At the start of the pandemic, the EU made several statements on the importance of global vaccine solidarity. However, the report said that these promises weren't turned into concrete actions.

“Instead, EU actions translated into an every-country-for-itself attitude, which effectively led to a form of gatekeeping of COVID-19 health technologies," it added.

According to data from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), nearly 73% of people in high-income countries have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, compared to just 30% in low-income countries.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
UK Government Considers Dropping Demand for Apple Encryption Backdoor
Severe Flooding in South Korea Claims Lives Amid Ongoing Rescue Operations
Japanese Man Discovers Family Connection Through DNA Testing After Decades of Separation
Russia Signals Openness to Ukraine Peace Talks Amid Escalating Drone Warfare
Switzerland Implements Ban on Mammography Screening
Japanese Prime Minister Vows to Stay After Coalition Loses Upper House Majority
Pogacar Extends Dominance with Stage Fifteen Triumph at Tour de France
CEO Resigns Amid Controversy Over Relationship with HR Executive
Man Dies After Being Pulled Into MRI Machine Due to Metal Chain in New York Clinic
NVIDIA Achieves $4 Trillion Valuation Amid AI Demand
US Revokes Visas of Brazilian Corrupted Judges Amid Fake Bolsonaro Investigation
U.S. Congress Approves Rescissions Act Cutting Federal Funding for NPR and PBS
North Korea Restricts Foreign Tourist Access to New Seaside Resort
Brazil's Supreme Court Imposes Radical Restrictions on Former President Bolsonaro
Centrist Criticism of von der Leyen Resurfaces as she Survives EU Confidence Vote
Judge Criticizes DOJ Over Secrecy in Dropping Charges Against Gang Leader
Apple Closes $16.5 Billion Tax Dispute With Ireland
Von der Leyen Faces Setback Over €2 Trillion EU Budget Proposal
UK and Germany Collaborate on Global Military Equipment Sales
Trump Plans Over 10% Tariffs on African and Caribbean Nations
Flying Taxi CEO Reclaims Billionaire Status After Stock Surge
Epstein Files Deepen Republican Party Divide
Zuckerberg Faces $8 Billion Privacy Lawsuit From Meta Shareholders
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
SpaceX Nears $400 Billion Valuation With New Share Sale
Microsoft, US Lab to Use AI for Faster Nuclear Plant Licensing
Trump Walks Back Talk of Firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell
Zelensky Reshuffles Cabinet to Win Support at Home and in Washington
"Can You Hit Moscow?" Trump Asked Zelensky To Make Putin "Feel The Pain"
Irish Tech Worker Detained 100 days by US Authorities for Overstaying Visa
Dimon Warns on Fed Independence as Trump Administration Eyes Powell’s Succession
Church of England Removes 1991 Sexuality Guidelines from Clergy Selection
Superman Franchise Achieves Success with Latest Release
Hungary's Viktor Orban Rejects Agreements on Illegal Migration
Jeff Bezos Considers Purchasing Condé Nast as a Wedding Gift
Ghislaine Maxwell Says She’s Ready to Testify Before Congress on Epstein’s Criminal Empire
Bal des Pompiers: A Celebration of Community and Firefighter Culture in France
FBI Chief Kash Patel Denies Resignation Speculations Amid Epstein List Controversy
Air India Pilot’s Mental Health Records Under Scrutiny
Google Secures Windsurf AI Coding Team in $2.4 Billion Licence Deal
Jamie Dimon Warns Europe Is Losing Global Competitiveness and Flags Market Complacency
South African Police Minister Suspended Amid Organised Crime Allegations
Nvidia CEO Claims Chinese Military Reluctance to Use US AI Technology
Hong Kong Advances Digital Asset Strategy to Address Economic Challenges
Australia Rules Out Pre‑commitment of Troops, Reinforces Defence Posture Amid US‑China Tensions
Martha Wells Says Humanity Still Far from True Artificial Intelligence
Nvidia Becomes World’s First Four‑Trillion‑Dollar Company Amid AI Boom
U.S. Resumes Deportations to Third Countries After Supreme Court Ruling
Excavation Begins at Site of Mass Grave for Children at Former Irish Institution
Iranian President Reportedly Injured During Israeli Strike on Secret Facility
×