Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR) MEP Gheorghe Piperea said on Tuesday that the Health and Finance ministers must be questioned in Parliament "as a matter of extreme urgency" regarding the Pfizer case, arguing that as a matter of fact, the European Commission - not Romania - should have been held accountable.
"I consider it a matter of extreme urgency that both the current minister of Health and the minister of Finance be questioned in Parliament to explain the Romanian state's official position in relation to this lawsuit, which unfortunately ended in failure. It is true that, at least from my perspective, given the way the case unfolded, this outcome was predictable. But now we need to know whether the Romanian state is prepared to appeal, whether it is prepared to finally make public the procurement contract with Pfizer - at least with Pfizer - whether it is prepared to disclose the selection procedure for the lawyers who represented us, if such a procedure even existed, and what arguments were presented before the Brussels court, arguments that anyway were 'crowned' with a failure of proportions," the MEP said at a press conference at the Palace of Parliament.
Piperea said it is in the public interest to know exactly what the 666 million euros currently being paid refer to. He brought to mind that the ruling also mentions penalties of 150,000 euros per day of delay, as well as interest at the European Central Bank's refinancing rate plus 5 percentage points.
"If payment is delayed for another two years, by my estimates the amount reaches 800 million euros. And now, when we discuss the contract for purchasing these Pfizer vaccines - including the 29 million doses Pfizer must deliver immediately and the Romanian state must receive - this procurement contract is still secret. It is top-secret, because we, the public and the opposition, do not know and probably will never know what it contains. But the paradox of paradoxes is that even the authorities who should represent us claim they do not know the contents of this file," the MEP said.
In his view, the contract should in fact be null and void.
"I heard former Health Minister Alexandru Rafila, now an MP, say that in 2023, when he was minister, he could not take the necessary measures to mitigate the disastrous effects of this contract for Romania because he did not know what it contained. Consequently, in a normal country, this would be considered absolutely null and void from the outset, because it has an illicit cause - both under our Civil Code and under international sales conventions. An illicit cause leads to the invalidity of the contract. This is an argument that could have been raised by defense. Perhaps the lawyers raised it and it was rejected - we do not know," he added.
He also argued that the European Commission should be the one held accountable in the Pfizer case.
"It is unclear whether this is a sales contract concluded through an agent - the European Commission. I looked carefully, after receiving information on Sunday evening from former USR Health Minister Vlad Voiculescu. I checked the regulations cited in Pfizer's lawsuit and then looked for decisions issued in 2020, 2021 and 2022 by the European Commission on centralized procurement. These decisions are neither sales contracts nor mandates, yet they apparently placed our authorities in a 'submissive' position. I also examined these Commission regulations and found something astonishing: it was not mandatory to conclude the contract under those specific conditions, nor was it mandatory to remain in it. There were mechanisms available which, had they been used in time, would have prevented today's disastrous consequences. But if the European Commission acted as an agent, then the Commission should have been held accountable to Pfizer, not Romania," the MEP argued.
He added that the Civil Code allows Romania to invoke the exception of non-performance, meaning it could freeze the payment of the 666 million euros.
"The Court of Auditors should urgently act ex officio to examine how payments have been made so far on the basis of a secret contract, and to also verify the legality of any future payments under this ruling. I understand that Mr. Prime Minister Bolojan, who in other cases says 'We have no money, we're still considering whether to pay', now says: 'We'll pay, we'll find solutions for phasing or negotiating with Pfizer'. And of course, the prosecutor's office should also take ex officio action, because there are criminal issues here as well, given that we are talking about secret contracts involving billions of euros," the AUR representative said.
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