#barbeck

The EU is not revealing the details of its contracts with vaccine makers. Why? As some Europeans continue to resist mandatory vaccine measures, a group of parliamentarians have upbraided the Commission for allowing pharmaceutical companies to ‘run roughshod over democracy.’    One of the most important lessons people learn early in life is to never plunk down hard-earned cash on a product before reading all of the fine print contained in the contract. ‘Caveat emptor,’ as every subject of the Roman Empire instinctively understood.Yet, it seems that few bureaucrats in Brussels have purchased a new home, used car or some newfangled device lately, because that’s exactly what these bumbling fools have done. In an effort to ‘protect the health of their constituents,’ they bought millions of batches of Covid vaccines from various pharmaceutical companies without letting lawmakers sneak a peek at the contracts. As it turns out, entire pages of these documents – the few that have been made public, that is – have been heavily redacted. This has raised more than one eyebrow in the European Union, and perhaps none more conspicuously than that of Romanian MEP Cristian Terhes.At the weekend, Terhes appeared at a press conference in Brussels with several other EU lawmakers at this side, all visibly shaken by the news that they would be required to produce, starting on November 3, a digital ‘green pass’ to gain entry into Parliament. Like many EU citizens, these lawmakers have declined to get the vaccine not because they are ‘anti-vaxxers’ but because they have been denied critical information regarding the product and procedures. Now they will be refused entry into Parliament, the place where the will of their people is (supposedly) represented.

Terhes revealed that, back in January, EU lawmakers were demanding “full access to the contracts signed between these companies that produce the vaccines and the European Union.” To say the parliamentarians were disappointed would be a gross understatement.

The Romanian MEP, who represents the Christian-Democratic National Peasants Party, quoted from a Euractiv article that reported: “The contract, signed between pharmaceutical company CureVac and the European Commission in November, was made available to MEPs [on January 12, 2021] in a redacted format after the company agreed to open the contract up to scrutiny.”

That is really putting the cart before the horse, for how can something that has been so grossly redacted be opened up to scrutiny? Terhes railed that Brussels is “imposing a medical product on European citizens without them knowing what’s in these contracts.” That’s simply inexcusable and should be easily struck down by even a third-rate lawyer.

More astonishing is that not even the EU members of Parliament know the details of the agreements.

To prove his point, the Romanian MEP held up individual pages of the CureVac contract, each one heavily redacted like some kind of imitation of artist Kazimir Malevich’s ‘Black Square.’ It doesn’t get any less concerning when we drill down to which parts of the contract were blacked out. According to an analysis conducted by Euractiv, “4.22% of the liability section and 15.38% of the indemnification section was found to be redacted, while 0% of the section on the processing of personal data was redacted.”

Meanwhile, the contract’s annexes, which delve into the nitty-gritty details of the agreement, were redacted by some 61%. In total, almost 24% of the contract was hidden. Now ask yourself this simple question: Would you sign up for a home mortgage if it was discovered that one-quarter of the agreement was missing? I'll crawl out on a limb and guess 'no.' Nor would anyone think you were ‘anti-mortgage’ or ‘mortgage hesitant’ if you did so.