The newly chosen heads of the European Union’s top three institutions have come under public scrutiny due to corruption allegations.
EU leaders recently agreed on appointments for the bloc’s top jobs and adopted a strategic agenda for 2024-2029 at a summit in Brussels.
Portugal’s former Prime Minister Antonio Costa was elected president of the European Council, the highest political entity of the union, where each member state is represented by its leader.
Leaders also nominated German politician Ursula von der Leyen for another term as president of the European Commission, the EU’s main executive body, and Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas for the post of foreign policy chief.
Von der Leyen and Kallas will need votes of confidence in the European Parliament.
But what has drawn attention is that the three leaders are all the subject of corruption allegations.
Ursula von der Leyen
Starting in 2020, the European Commission secured large quantities of vaccines from several pharmaceutical and vaccine manufacturers to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
The commission’s largest contract for the supply of the vaccines was with nUS company Pfizer.
The EU had contracts worth €35 billion ($37.6 billion) with Pfizer for 1.8 billion doses of the vaccine.
The exact value of the contracts has not been officially disclosed due to trade secrets.
Phone messages between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during the vaccine procurement negotiations spurred the allegations against her.
There have been calls for the European Commission to disclose the content of the messages, but it has refused. READ MORE
