EU Scream Ep.108: Accountability in the Von Der Leyen Era, Greece, Pfizer, Iran
Border violence. Hostage diplomacy. Vaccine purchases. Just some of the areas where opaqueness in EU decision-making can erode public trust and ultimately democracy. These also are areas where accountability journalism like freedom of information requests can help uncover undue influence by lobbies and foreign powers as well as abuses by security services. One of the highest profile cases of accountability journalism in Europe to date is the decision by The New York Times to sue the European Commission for access to phone messages — messages in which the Commission's president, Ursula von der Leyen, and the chief executive of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, reportedly negotiated vaccine purchases during the Covid-19 pandemic. Matina Stevis, the outgoing Brussels bureau chief for the Times, who is part of that lawsuit, says such scrutiny would be comparatively banal in jurisdictions like the US where news media and government regularly wrangle in court over the line between an executive's ability to govern and the public's right to know. But in the EU such scrutiny still can arouse accusations of euroscepticism and even sympathies with Brexit. Matina says the EU's accountability muscles need "deepening and flexing and exercising" but she also suggests reporters working EU corridors may need to do more to avoid "falling into the traps of access journalism" and "going, going softly so that people keep answering their phones when you call." Also in this episode, the pros and cons of reporting on the case of Johan Floderus, the EU official recently released from captivity in Iran. And a hard and harrowing look at the evidence of deadly actions by the Greek coastguard toward migrants on the Mediterranean Sea — and at the half-hearted attempts by Brussels to rein in such abuses amid tectonic shifts in refugee law and policy. These include calls for the so-called externalization of migration where refugees and asylum seekers must have their applications to enter the EU assessed offshore in countries like Albania or even Rwanda. Such shifts also entail discussions on reforming and even abandoning the 1951 Refugee Convention that was a key plank of postwar humanitarianism.