By Carlos Esteban*
The principle that citizens, like impressionable infants with limited intelligence, have no right to know the intricacies of the political maneuvers that are carried out in their name and imposed on them, is increasingly spreading throughout the West.
In the United States, for example, the Republican deputies, the majority in the House of Representatives, want to create a committee to investigate the interference of the FBI and other intelligence agencies in the political life of the country, and the media (and the Democrats) are an outcry: that would endanger national security!
This is a strange spectacle of some journalists begging their readers to have blind trust in the opaque agencies that control their lives and not to insist on disturbing their pretty little heads wanting to know what is not good for them.
In Europe it is worse, because its executive does not respond to any electorate and its parliament is an echo chamber to support the ukases of the Commission. But there are still, from figs to figs, signs of life and dignity in the Eurochamber.
Thus, MEPs members of the Special Committee on Covid have summoned Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, to appear and justify the vaccine contracts that she signed with Pfizer and which are estimated at billions of euros.
MEPs justify this decision by the need to shed light on an opaque issue that has sparked anger within the European Union
Perhaps times are changing, after the scandal that rocked Brussels following the arrest of senior EU officials accused of being corrupted by Qatar, and now is as good a time as any to hold von der Leyen accountable for his role in the signature of vaccine contracts with the US laboratory Pfizer.
The American magazine Politico claims to have a confidential letter written by Kathleen Van Brempt, president of the Special Commission on Covid, according to which the MEP members of said commission have made the firm decision to summon Von Der Leyen to make a public statement about the vaccine contracts he signed with Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer.
“MEPs want to ask von der Leyen questions about her role in negotiating massive Covid vaccine contracts estimated at billions of euros signed at the start of the pandemic. Von der Leyen would have maintained an exchange of SMS messages with Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer shortly before the signing of said contracts,” reports Politico.
Kathleen van Brempt explains that the EU “has spent enormous public resources on the production and purchase of vaccines during the pandemic. Parliament is entitled to full transparency on the modalities of this spending and on the negotiations that took place within Parliament that led to this spending.”
Not exactly a surprise. On December 16, seven deputies from the Greens opened hostilities against the president of the European Commission and her husband, Heiko von der Leyen, whose activities, financed in part by her wife, are causing great controversy in Europe.
“We are particularly concerned by the appearance of press articles in Italy and Germany about the commercial activity in EU countries of Orgenesis Inc., a US company that employs Heiko Von der Leyen, husband of the President of the European Commission,” reads a letter posted on Twitter by MEPs.
The letter mentions the presence of Heiko von der Leyen on the supervisory committee of a foundation that received funding of more than €300 million from the European Commission, headed by his wife, Ursula von der Leyen.
Faced with media pressure, Heiko resigned from his position, but his company (Orgenesis Inc.) continues within this foundation.
According to Italian media, despite the fact that Mr. von der Leyen has resigned from the supervisory board of the foundation, Orgenesis Italy SRL continues to be part of the project and receives grants of up to €200,000 per year from the Italian Plan for Recovery and Resilience, deputies denounce.
The journalists also point out that Orgenesis Inc., and its European subsidiaries are not registered in the European Union’s transparency registry.
*Carlos Esteban, 58 years old, fifteen years at the leading economic information newspaper EXPANSIÓN, then from Grupo Recoletos, the last three years as head of Interactive Services on the medium’s website. Then at Intereconomía, where he founded the Catholic weekly ALBA, he wrote an opinion in ÉPOCA, where he also covered the International section, for which he was responsible when La Gaceta was born (as a general newspaper). For a few years he has been working as a freelance, collaborating for different media.
With information from La Gaceta de la Iberosfera