The Digital Shredder: When Elites Delete the Evidence

The Digital Shredder: Ursula von der Leyen and the Death of Accountability

Is the era of the sovereign citizen being replaced by the era of the sovereign CEO? When the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, negotiated a multi-billion-euro vaccine deal with Pfizer via private text messages, and then claimed those messages simply vanished into thin air, she did more than just dodge a transparency request. She signalled to every EU citizen in the West that the most consequential decisions of our age are now beyond the reach of the law, the ballot box, and the basic standards of public record.

A Culture of Disappearing Data

I recall a conversation with a seasoned Whitehall clerk who once told me that the strength of a democracy is measured by the quality of its archives. “If it isn’t written down,” he said, “it never happened. And if it never happened, no one can be blamed.”

We are currently witnessing a coordinated, pan-European effort to ensure that nothing is ever “written down.” In the European Union, the Commission spent €71 billion on COVID-19 vaccines, securing up to 4.6 billion doses, roughly ten for every man, woman, and child in the bloc. Yet, when the New York Times and the European Ombudsman asked to see the messages exchanged between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, the Commission’s response was a masterpiece of bureaucratic insolence: the messages were “short-lived” and therefore not “documents.”

This is not a new habit for von der Leyen. During her tenure as German Defence Minister, her phone was wiped clean just as investigators began probing lucrative consultancy contracts. The pattern is clear: when the questions get difficult, the data disappears.

The Neoliberal Handshake

The historical precedent for this isn’t found in the annals of democracy, but in the history of the “Company Store.” In the 19th century, workers were tied to corporate entities that controlled their wages, their housing, and their health. Today, we see a modern iteration where the state acts as a procurement agent for private monopolies.

The “Pfizergate” scandal is not merely about texts; it is about the “elite capture” of public health. While von der Leyen’s husband, Heiko, serves as Medical Director for Orgenesis, a biotech firm involved in gene therapy that has benefited from EU-funded projects, the Commission insists there is no conflict of interest. Perhaps. But in a healthy democracy, the appearance of such a conflict, combined with the active destruction of the paper trail, would be grounds for immediate resignation.

Instead, we see a mirror image in the United Kingdom. Our own government continues to fight the release of unredacted vaccine contracts, hiding behind “commercial sensitivity.” This is the neoliberal orthodoxy in its terminal phase: public risk, private profit, and total secrecy.

The Defence of Secrecy

The counter-argument from the Commission is predictable: these were “emergency times” requiring “agile communication.” They argue that formal procurement processes would have cost lives.

This is a false binary. Speed does not require the suspension of the law. One can negotiate quickly while still ensuring that a record is kept. To suggest otherwise is to argue that efficiency is incompatible with democracy. If we accept that “emergencies” grant leaders the right to conduct the public’s business via ephemeral apps, we have effectively handed them a permanent “delete” button for their own accountability.

Restoring the Public Interest

In May 2025, the European General Court finally ruled that the Commission was wrong to withhold those messages. The judges noted that the Commission’s explanations were “imprecise” and lacked credibility. It was a rare victory for the rule of law, yet the political consequences remain non-existent.

Ursula von der Leyen remains in her post, shielded by a Brussels bureaucracy that views transparency as a nuisance rather than a duty. But as long as the “Pfizergate” texts remain hidden, her mandate is not one of democratic consent, but of corporate convenience.

Democracy cannot survive in a world where the masters of the state operate like executives of a private hedge funds.

Paul Knaggs

Editor & founder of Labour Heartlands. 𝙁𝙧𝙚𝙚𝙗𝙤𝙧𝙣 𝙀𝙣𝙜𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙝 𝙍𝙖𝙙𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙎𝙤𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩. Citizen journalist and veteran writing from the working-class coalface challenging the corruption, liberal elitism, and political complacency that dominate Britain today. Dyslexic but driven… I write because silence serves the powerful. Defender of free speech, civil liberties, and real democracy. Committed to an open, accountable democracy, not the manufactured version handed down from party machines, think tanks, or the Westminster bubble.