European Ombudsman Teresa Anjinho has opened an investigation into European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen over a confidential group chat in which she communicated with Volodymyr Zelensky and several European leaders, Berliner Zeitung reports.
Alongside von der Leyen and the Ukrainian president, the chat included German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and outgoing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The investigation does not concern the contents of the exchange, but whether the Commission broke transparency rules by refusing access to the correspondence.
The existence of the chat, dubbed by the press the “Washington Group”, became public in January. The Dutch investigative outlet Follow the Money (FTM) requested access to the messages, but the Commission rejected the request, arguing that publication could harm the EU’s relations with countries outside the bloc. According to media reports, participants discussed, among other things, strategies for dealing with US President Donald Trump.
In a letter to the Commission, Anjinho said she was examining the refusal. The inquiry will determine whether the Commission complied with EU transparency rules when it turned down the request.
It is not the first dispute of this kind. Last year, the EU’s General Court ruled that the Commission had improperly handled a New York Times request for text messages exchanged between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during negotiations over the bloc’s COVID-19 vaccine contracts. Earlier this month, Anjinho also criticised the deletion of a message from Macron concerning the EU’s proposed trade deal with the Mercosur bloc, concluding that it had been deleted unlawfully.
The investigation is expected to take several months, with a meeting between the Commission and the ombudsman scheduled by mid-July.
