BIG PHARMA IN PARLIAMENT

We were to meet with MEP Michèle Rivasi this week in Paris for an exclusive interview. Last minute change: Curevac, a German biopharmaceutical multinational, has agreed to make public the contract it has with the European Commission: Michèle Rivasi must come urgently to Brussels to read this contract. 

We met her on January 19, just after the discovery of the latter, under circumstances that were, to say the least, peculiar: 45 minutes, in a closed room, with a ban on making copies or taking photos, to consult a 67-page contract. Many passages are blacked out, notably the price of the vaccines, the places of production, but also two whole pages that deal with the legal responsibility of the multinational. When Ms. Rivasi asks the Commission who is responsible for side effects from the vaccine, there will be no answer… 

What is going on in the arcana of the European institutions concerning contracts between pharmaceutical companies (Pfizer, Astrazeneca, BioNTech, Moderna, Curevac…), goes beyond the specific framework of the negotiations and illustrates perfectly the stranglehold of private companies on Europe, and therefore on all its Member States. So on our lives.