Spain's agreements with other countries to resell vaccines should be public: Maldita.es goes to court to stop the Government from hiding them

The Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS) has turned to Justice to hide the government’s agreements with other countries to resell or donate vaccines against COVID-19. A court must decide whether this information should be public, as the Council for Transparency and Good Government (CTBG) already resolved after a claim from Maldita.es.

Maldita.es has appeared in the case to defend in court that this information should be public. The AEMPS, dependent on the Ministry of Health and represented by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, has filed an appeal before the Central Contentious-Administrative Court number 1 of Madrid. The co-defendants are the Transparency Council itself and us. Maldita.es will be defended by the lawyer Samuel Parra, an expert in transparency, whom we thank for his collaboration in this case.

Why should these contracts be made public?

Mainly because we do not know how the Government is acting. With which countries has Spain signed agreements to provide them with vaccines against COVID-19? How many are donating the doses and how many are reselling them? Has the government enriched itself by reselling the vaccines or has it charged the states the same as it paid? Three questions that we would like to answer and to which the citizens do not know the answers. The information requested by Maldita.es through the transparency law and approved as public by the Transparency Council would allow us to give these answers. 

The Government does not want to make the agreements public because it says it could harm its relations with other countries, but it has not argued how or in what way.

The resolution of the AEMPS to the request for information of Maldita.es assured that the agreements of sale or donation of vaccines could not be made public because it could affect «the higher interest of protection of foreign relations», because they involve a third country. However, the Transparency Council ruled that the government had not provided a «reasonable and sufficient justification» for the need to apply the alleged restrictions and urged it to hand over the agreements. Instead of complying with the ruling, the government has appealed to the courts.

Samuel Parra: «Citizens must be able to know the criteria and conditions for the resale of vaccines has occurred»

Samuel Parra, expert in transparency, privacy and technology, and lawyer who collaborates with Maldita.es in this case, explains that «since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a certain obscurantism in everything related to vaccines and agreements or contracts with pharmaceutical companies». «Citizens should be able to know the criteria and conditions for the resale of vaccines or the details of the agreements between Spain and other countries for the donation or resale of vaccines. This is public information and is part of the necessary control of public officials».

Parra also refers to the first paragraph of the preamble of the transparency law which ensures that “transparency and access to public information must be the fundamental axes of all political action”.

Opacity in dealings with pharmaceutical companies goes back a long way

This case is not exceptional. The relations of public administrations with the pharmaceutical industry tend to be characterized by opacity. At Maldita.es we believe that citizens have the right to know the prices at which governments buy medicines or vaccines. More so in a context like the COVID-19 pandemic, where access to vaccines between poor and rich countries has been completely unequal .

Although the agreements requested by Maldita.es are between Spain and third countries, they are related to the prior purchase of vaccines by our country from pharmaceutical companies. This acquisition was centralized and negotiated from the European Commission. There have been several controversies due to the lack of transparency. From the contract with AstraZeneca, wich was poorly censored by Commission, to the SMS between President von der Leyen and the CEO of Pfizer, which the European Ombudsman ruled should be public, but Brussels continues to hide.