The statement
“I’m going to give an example here, without wanting to stir up this topic because it’s not the topic I’m most specialized in: an investigation is underway at the European Commission because the husband of the president of the European Commission is one of the CEOs of Pfizer, whom the European Commission awarded millions in vaccines” — André Ventura in an interview with RTP3.
The context
André Ventura, president of Chega, the third party with the largest parliamentary representation in the next legislature, gave an interview to RTP3 last Wednesday. Asked on the program Grande Entrevista, led by journalist Vítor Gonçalves, about whether the new parliamentary group intended to recover any of the commissions of inquiry that did not advance in the last legislature, André Ventura said yes: the one referring to management during the pandemic.
“I think that the management in several European countries, and Portugal is one of them, of Covid-19 deserves scrutiny because it was one of the moments when the powers were most opaque”, defended the party leader, giving as examples “the acquisition of ventilators that never came” and “the money that was spent on vaccines”: “We still don’t really understand what was spent and what was wasted”, he considered.
It was then that André Ventura spoke about an investigation that was currently underway in the European institutions, regarding the fact that the husband of Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, was allegedly one of the directors of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, to which millions were awarded of euros in vaccines against covid-19. “This is the type of thing that undermines citizens’ trust in politics,” said the president of Chega.
The facts
Except that Ursula von der Leyen’s husband is not “one of the CEOs of Pfizer”. Heiko von der Leyen, to whom the President of the European Commission has been married since 1986, is, in fact, scientific director of Orgenesis, a biotechnology company based in the United States of America and with laboratories in Germany. During the most critical phase of the pandemic, Orgenesis began developing its own vaccine against Covid-19 — a different drug from the one Pfizer and BioNTech ended up producing.
It is true that the relationship between Ursula and Heiko von der Leyen, and the latter’s connection to a pharmaceutical company, was under investigation after eight MEPs expressed “concerns” about a possible conflict of interests between the position of the President of the European Commission and the activity husband’s professional, but that did not include the production of vaccines against Covid-19.
The case arose because two Orgenesis subsidiaries received, at different times in 2022, European funding for the development of drugs — none of them related to Covid-19. Heiko von der Leyen was part of the supervisory board of one of these projects, but resigned when the press reported the case.
The MEPs’ complaint was then analyzed by the Transparency Commissioner, Věra Jourová, who came to the conclusion, in March last year, that there was no conflict of interest in the cases highlighted by the MEPs.
In the case of the project in which Heiko von der Leyen was on the supervisory board, the European entity found that neither the scientist nor the Orgenesis were involved in the funding application or the process of receiving funds. Therefore, “a conflict of interests of the president [da Comissão Europeia] may also be excluded for this reason.”
In the second funding case, the funds were approved and delivered by the European Innovation Council and the SME Executive Agency, without any involvement of the European Commission or its leadership in the process. So you understand Will see Jourová, there was also no conflict of interest.
The verdict
It is not true that Ursula von der Leyen’s husband is a director of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, producer of millions of vaccines against Covid-19. Heiko von der Leyen is scientific director of a distinguished biopharmaceutical company, Orgenesis.
The investigations into alleged conflicts of interest involving the president of the European Commission and her husband are in no way related to the vaccine against Covid-19, but rather to the financing of two Orgenesis subsidiaries for gene therapy projects.
But an opinion from the Transparency Commissioner concluded that, after all, these conflicts did not exist: neither Ursula von der Leyen was involved in the decision-making process regarding this funding, nor Heiko von give Leyen was involved in the funding requests.
