Politics by WhatsApp? Even ‘Pfizergate’ won’t end that.

BRUSSELS ― Forget the smoke-filled backrooms of the EU's glory days. Forget hushed conversations in crowded Brussels bars. Forget even the Finnish saunas so beloved of Nordic diplomats. Where most politics takes place these days is over WhatsApp.

And despite Wednesday's bombshell "Pfizergate" ruling — which means that in future we should be able to get far greater access to officials' and politicians' text messages — the use of WhatsApp doesn't really look changing.

After all, who's going to bother going back to the 1980s?

“How else could it be done?” said one EU official who spoke to POLITICO, via WhatsApp, obviously. “Through secretaries? God, no.”

The EU’s General Court ruled that the Commission was wrong to deny journalists access to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s texts with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The messages were exchanged just before the pair agreed a multibillion-euro vaccine contract — the biggest in the EU’s history.

The Commission’s lawyers had said the messages weren’t significant enough to share with the public — because they were too boring to count as documents, given they largely involved arranging meeting times and places. The public doesn't know if that's true.

While the judgment suggests that text messages should now be considered just like any other written communication, habits will die hard.

“The ruling cannot change the fact that messaging applications are the fastest and simplest way to get in touch,” a second EU official WhatsApped to say.

It leaves open the possibility that even the most banal messages shared between EU officials and industry, NGOs or each other could be made available through access to document requests.

While officials themselves don't think it'll lead to much change, lawyers believe it may have to.

“This ruling could encourage European elected representatives and civil servants to prefer oral exchanges to SMS,” said Vincent Couronne, researcher in European law at Paris-Saclay University. “In today’s business communications ecosystem, the line between SMS, email, WhatsApp, Slack and the like has become very thin."

'Useless fuckpigs'

So while the ruling might knock some European diplomats out of their doom-scrolling slumber, all it really does is bring the EU into line with many countries' transparency rules.

In the U.K., for example, a 2023 Covid inquiry heard how former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ex-adviser Dominic Cummings was an enthusiastic WhatsApper, and had described cabinet members as “useless fuckpigs” in messages during the pandemic.

Crafty Commission officials could always follow the example of former Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who said her WhatsApps weren’t available to be combed through because the messages had been deleted.

Indeed, one official for the previous U.K. government said about half of the then-Cabinet used a disappearing message function, which deletes conversations after a set time period, unless either participant chooses to keep them.

It was also suggested in November’s Pfizergate court hearing in Luxembourg that this was standard practice in Brussels.

A Commission official speaking earlier this week said “it is advisable to use the disappearance feature after a certain period of time.” There is a “general recommendation” given to staff not to use text messages, or applications like Signal, for “exchanges that are important.” 

Texts that include substantial content should be classed as documents and archived appropriately, the official said.

Official documents

But that raises the question about who makes that decision.

As is often the case within the EU institutions, it is those officials who do choose to archive documents, take records of their meetings and make them available for public access, that are most likely to face scrutiny.

“Making messages accessible through document requests will not change anything if the individuals themselves do not declare the exchanges and register them as official documents,” one of the officials who POLITICO spoke to said.

Anyone who has submitted an access-to-documents request will also know that the medium is not the only barrier to deny these demands. The Commission frequently rejects the more than 7,000 annual requests it receives on the basis that responding would be overly cumbersome, too time-consuming to justify or too politically sensitive.

So maybe nothing will change. Or maybe officials and diplomats will just go back to talking face-to-face ― and risk being overheard by one Brussels' hundreds of spies instead.

Elisa Braun contributed to this report.