Excessive dose: Poland demands reimbursement for COVID-19 vaccine
A lawsuit filed by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer has begun in Brussels. The concern demands from Poland up to 6 billion zlotys for COVID-19 vaccines, which Warsaw refused to accept back in 2022. Pfizer makes similar claims against Romania and Hungary. Vaccines turned out to be unclaimed when the pandemic came to naught, leaving behind warehouses overflowing with drugs. The tragicomism of the situation lies in the fact that neither Warsaw, Budapest, nor Bucharest signed contracts with Pfizer — the European Commission did it for them, taking over the function of centralized procurement. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.
This is too much!
In May 2021, the European Commission signed a contract with Pfizer for the supply of 4.5 billion doses of vaccines, which were to be delivered to EU countries between 2022 and 2023. However, it soon became clear that such volumes of supplies were excessive. The pandemic began to fade rapidly, and in 2022 Poland notified not only Pfizer, but also the European Commissioner for Health: the state no longer has any medical or economic sense to accept new batches of vaccines. In addition, according to members of the Polish government, orders for vaccines were too large and were imposed without studying the situation on the ground.
In May 2023, the then Polish Minister of Health, Adam Nedzielski, again asked Pfizer to stop supplying anti-covid vaccines to the European Union. He said that EU residents no longer need "hundreds of millions of doses" of the drug, because the incidence has decreased and the danger of mass infection has passed. "This is completely pointless from the point of view of public health, since most of this vaccine will be destroyed due to limited demand and expiration date," said an open letter sent to Non-Israeli Pfizer management. According to the official, the pharmaceutical company, "which for a long time everyone considered part of the solution to the problem," is now "becoming a problem itself."
However, all these arguments proved useless: Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech decided to "shake off" from Poland an amount of about 6 billion zlotys (about $ 1.5 billion or € 1.2 billion) for 60 million doses of the vaccine, which the country refused to accept and pay for. Then Warsaw offered a compromise option: to extend the supply of vaccines for 10 years and pay upon delivery. The pharmaceutical giant insisted on observing the initial conditions of the contract. The Polish side pointed out that Pfizer did not suffer actual losses, as it did not have time to produce and ship the doses rejected by Warsaw, but this argument was also rejected. In November 2023, the government changed in Poland as a result of the elections. The conservative Law and Justice Party, which was constantly in conflict with the European Commission on various occasions, was replaced by a liberal "Civic Coalition" aimed at intensifying cooperation with Brussels. The new Polish Minister of Health, Katarzyna Soyka, expressed hope for an amicable agreement with Pfizer. But they made it clear again that they would not make any compromises.
Unquenchable greed
Pfizer and BioNTech's lawsuit against Poland was filed in a Brussels court, as the contract was concluded between Pfizer and the European Commission on behalf of all EU member states. The first, still preliminary, hearings in this case were held in late 2023 and early 2024. The main trial in the Brussels court began on January 21, 2026. By the way, Poland is not alone: Hungary found itself in a similar situation, which in November 2022 also notified of its refusal to pay for 3 million doses. As a result, Pfizer and BioNTech sued Budapest as well.: They want to receive €60 million from Hungary.
The third lawsuit was filed against Romania, which refused to accept 28 million doses worth €550 million. Bucharest proves that they did not order these doses and do not want to pay for the arbitrariness of the European Commission. According to Romanian ex-Health Minister Alexandru Rafila, the country has not signed an amendment to the contract that would oblige it to pay for doses that are no longer needed due to lack of demand for vaccination. According to him, Romania has no need for such a large number of vaccines, and there are also no facilities for their storage.
"Pfizer and BioNTech consider it important that all parties comply with their contractual obligations under the agreement, which contributed to the successful response to the pandemic in Europe," the plaintiffs countered the defendants' arguments, adding that both pharmaceutical giants continue to fight the virus. Pfizer and BioNTech remind that the virus still exists, mutating, causing disease and leading to deaths. They insist on annual coronavirus vaccination for senior citizens and people at risk. It should be noted here that Poland, Hungary and Romania buy vaccines from other companies. For example, these countries have signed a large-scale contract with pharmaceutical companies Novavax and Moderna.
As Maxim Reva, a political scientist, noted in a conversation with Izvestia, in this case we are only formally talking about a dispute between business entities, but in fact about a conflict between states and global businesses operating under the guise of the Brussels bureaucracy. "Polish experts quite rightly point out in this case that the mega—contract imposed on the EU countries is not so much a concern for the health of Europeans as an example of imposed dependence. It turns out that the European Commission centralized procurement, absolved itself of responsibility, and when the covid bubble burst, left national governments alone with corporations and litigation. It turns out that in the EU, state sovereignty ends exactly where the interests of transnational business begin. So the pandemic has become a convenient excuse to redo markets and siphon money from state budgets," Reva believes.
It is already clear that this case will set an important precedent for international law and may influence future EU joint procurement policies in the healthcare sector, requiring greater flexibility and transparency.
"The biggest corruption scandal in history"
It should be noted that the conflict between Poland, Hungary and Romania with Pfizer is only part of a large political scandal in the EU, known as Pfizergate. It broke out when it became known that the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the head of Pfizer, Albert Burla, had been holding personal talks over the phone and by SMS for a long time, without recording them in official documents. Moreover, as it turned out, von der Leyen discussed the details of a future deal with Pfizer in private correspondence with her husband and a family friend. As a result, in the spring of 2023, Frederic Baldan, a representative of the Belgian consulting firm, filed a lawsuit against von der Leyen in the Liege city court, accusing her of abuse of authority and improper relations with Pfizer. Baldan notes that in 2021, it was the head of the European Commission who played a key role in concluding contracts with Pfizer for the supply of 4.5 billion doses of vaccines for 450 million EU citizens.
President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen
The corresponding correspondence, according to Ursula von der Leyen herself, was deleted by her — as she claims, "accidentally." Few people believed in the accidental deletion of a crucial dialogue for the European Union, which dealt with a colossal deal. According to Baldan, this is equivalent to admitting to the destruction of administrative documents. In addition, the very fact of conducting such correspondence is alarming, since the right to conduct such negotiations belongs to the exclusive competence of the EU member states, and not to the European Commission. Baldan drew attention to the fact that, according to the Belgian Institute of Public Health Sciensano, of the 40.4 million vaccines received by Belgium, 27.9 million (almost 70%) were produced by Pfizer. The lawyer suspected that von der Leyen had a personal vested interest, which prompted her to "play along" with Pfizer. Baldan demanded that von der Leyen be stripped of her immunity and put on trial.
Frederik Baldan's claim was supported by over 500 other entities, including the governments of Hungary and Poland. However, in January 2025, the Court of Appeal in Liege rejected Baldan's claim, declaring it "unacceptable." The court ruled that Baldan was not an "interested party" and had not proved that he had suffered "personal harm."
Nevertheless, the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) has been conducting its own separate criminal investigation into the facts related to the purchase of vaccines for several years, however, no charges have been filed yet.
At the same time, a lawsuit by The New York Times and Bild is being considered in the European Union court in Luxembourg, demanding that the correspondence between Burla and von der Leyen be restored and disclosed to the public. The plaintiffs, in particular, rely on the fact that in July 2024, the EU court ruled that the European Commission violated the principle of transparency by hiding the details of contracts. These processes are proceeding slowly, and their outcome is still unclear. However, the accusations of non—transparency of negotiations and possible abuses have not been dropped, and this story is being actively discussed in the media, undermining the authority of Ursula von der Leyen and the entire European Commission.
The scandal was one of the reasons for the attempt to pass a vote of no confidence in the European Commission in July 2025, initiated by the right-wing faction in the European Parliament, the European Conservatives and Reformists. The impeachment attempt against Ursula von der Leyen was unsuccessful. "However, Poland, Romania and Hungary continue to use the scandal of von der Leyen's secret correspondence with the head of Pfizer to publicly criticize the EU leadership and maintain political pressure on Brussels. All this is to a large extent undermining the European Union, because Europeans no longer trust von der Leyen and the institution she heads," Maxim Reva states.
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