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Romania is fighting Pfizer in a court case and investigating its own politicians for allegedly signing illegal vaccine deals. Meanwhile, Brussels continues to sign billion-euro contracts through the same shady routes being investigated. The irony would be funny if it weren’t quite so pricey.
The European Union has quietly entered into yet another joint procurement contract for pandemic vaccines, despite Romanian prosecutors developing criminal cases aimed at former officials for buying €1 billion in “excess” COVID-19 vaccines and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office investigating Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for texting about €35 billion in vaccine deals. The cycle of dubious purchases continues, and taxpayers pay for deals whose legality is still very much up in the air.
Romania is in an unprecedented legal pandemic that it caused itself. Between January and May 2021, the National Anti-Corruption Directorate (DNA) is prosecuting former Prime Minister Florin Cîțu and former Health Ministers Vlad Voiculescu and Ioana Mihăilă for receiving 52.8 million more doses of vaccines than the country required. Prosecutors contend their impact on the state budget is already greater than €1 billion. There is a plain mathematical case against the officials. Romania received 37.6 million doses as of January 2021. That’s enough to vaccinate more than 23 million men and women. But just 10.7 million people were considered to be eligible for the vaccine. According to prosecutors, those extra 52.8 million doses had no record of a public health purpose and constituted a serious abuse of office.
Concomitantly, Pfizer and BioNTech have sued Romania in the Brussels Court for refusing to accept and pay for roughly 28 million doses of Comirnaty valued at €550 million. The lawsuit comes after the drug company did not sign a modification to the original EU-brokered accord. The country’s health minister says there is no legal basis for punishment. It creates a Kafka-esque situation in which Romanian leaders can spend jail time for buying excessive numbers of vaccines, but Romania can be sued by other actors for not buying even more. The Romanian probe is part of a bigger problem in Europe in finding out how vaccines are bought.
The “Pfizergate” scandal began at the beginning of 2023 when the European Commission declined to send The New York Times these text messages, saying it didn’t have any relevant information. By May 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union had issued a heavy rebuke of the Commission, saying that the Commission had not provided “plausible” explanations for not sending out the messages and had violated rules on transparency. The court ruling confirmed what critics had long believed: the EU’s process for purchasing vaccines does not operate under ordinary rules of accountability. Yet, despite this court order and the EPPO investigation in progress, the Commission’s vaccine purchasing system remains somewhat the same. The EU sped purchases of vaccines via a joint procurement mechanism that made the questionable deals at the beginning of 2021 rather than invest into fixing its procurement system.
In October 2025, the commission revealed a new contract that would enable member states to purchase up to 4 million doses of protein-based BIMERVAX vaccine intended to combat new variants. Commissioner Hadja Lahbib said the purchase was needed because of a “sharp rise in COVID-19 cases of the so-called ‘Frankenstein’ variant” and to protect vulnerable groups. It’s perfectly appropriate in emergency environments to prepare for public health emergencies, but the terms and conditions of the contract appear to adhere to the same principles as they did before with no minimum purchase requirement, a two-year term, and vaccine shipping times that align with vaccination seasons. Given the current state of the market, this decision is particularly impressive. Moderna recently lowered its sales forecast for 2024 by as much as $1 billion, citing “low COVID vaccine sales to the European Union” and predicting that this weakness would last until 2026. The company said that Pfizer’s agreement with the region, which pertains up to 2026, makes it difficult to purchase products anywhere else.
In times of emergency, spending becomes a form of risk management, and to be open about it becomes a luxury that puts public health at risk. During the pandemic’s peak, the pace of procurement was insane. The EU’s joint procurement system, which began in June 2020, has made the act of buying goods easier but the process of regulating them more difficult. When von der Leyen reached out in a text to Bourla, she was operating in a system that favored getting things done quickly over abiding by regulations. It blew one’s mind with the level of money. Romania’s €1 billion that would have been otherwise spent on extra doses is only 2.8% of the €35 billion EU-Pfizer deals under scrutiny. If the EPPO investigation finds that von der Leyen’s negotiations were in breach of procurement law, the entire €35 billion setup could face legal action but payments are still being made.
Pfizer’s aggressive suit against Romania, Poland and Hungary indicates that pharmaceutical companies have demonstrated the ability to enforce contracts even if the epidemiological climate changes or new evidence of over-purchasing appears. That makes for a one-way financial ratchet: the states bear the risk of too many orders, and companies do nothing but make money. The Romanian case provides a hint about how this could unfold further down the road. If DNA prosecutors prove that Cîțu, Voiculescu and Mihăilă do not have good reason to have purchased the €1 billion worth of goods, the whole European Union procurement system will become open to question. But the investigation into von der Leyen has seen next to no progress, and the Commission hasn’t been harmed institutionally in any way apart from the transparency court’s warning. Romania is suing Pfizer over not purchasing enough vaccines and prosecuting its leaders for purchasing too many. As well, the EU considers that its president also handles secret negotiations while they sign new contracts in turn, as well. Both investigations and contracts that are declared illegal must be paid for by taxpayers. This circular absurdity indicates there is a larger governance problem.
When emergency powers go into effect, they are an innate impulse for bureaucratic self-preservation that lasts much longer than the emergencies that brought them into effect. And if the EU’s joint procurement system isn’t reformed in a meaningful way and its senior officials aren’t held accountable, the bloc has the potential to transform crisis exceptions into corrupt norms.