Signal Messenger: Von der Leyen has preset auto-delete for messages
EU Commission President von der Leyen cannot release messages between her and Macron in response to freedom of information requests. Reason: automatic deletion.
(Image: EU-Kommission)
The EU Commission has admitted that President Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) preset the automatic deletion function for her text messages on the encrypted messaging service Signal. This raises concerns about the transparency of her decisions. The issue arose after journalists from the investigative portal "Follow the Money" demanded access to a short note from French President Emmanuel Macron from January 2024. In this message, Macron had apparently tried to influence the planned Mercosur trade agreement between the EU and South American countries.
The Commission told Follow the Money that von der Leyen had received the message via Signal. However, auto-delete ("disappearing messages") had been activated for the chat, meaning that the request for the content based on the EU's Freedom of Information Act was in vain. The President had done this "to prevent possible major data leaks".
According to an internal guideline, the Commission recommends that all its employees use this deletion function. It also argued that Macron's message only reflected publicly known positions anyway and would therefore not have been kept in accordance with its own archiving rules.
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Organizations such as Transparency International sharply criticize the deletion practice. They complain that the automatic deletion of chats undermines fundamental transparency and the right of access to EU documents. This makes it impossible for journalists and the public to understand decisions.
The new revelation is reminiscent of the "Pfizergate" scandal. Here, von der Leyen is confronted with the accusation that she did not want to hand over text messages from Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla about the purchase of Covid-19 vaccines. Following a complaint by the New York Times, the EU court ruled that the Commission had been unable to provide a plausible explanation for the disappearance of these messages. The reason given by the executive body for the manual deletion in this case is that the text messages were only used to make appointments for telephone calls during the coronavirus pandemic and would therefore not have been of interest to posterity.
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