EMA pressured to approve first Covid vaccine quickly: report

In November, the European Commission put pressure on the European Medicines Agency to quickly approve the coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, research platform Follow the Money reported based on leaked EMA documents.

The European Commission wanted the vaccine to be approved in the European Union at the same time it was in the United Kingdom and United States. In an email sent on November 19, EMA deputy director Noel Wathion told his fellow administrators that it would give the European Commission too much "political fallout" if Europe approved the vaccine much later than the US and UK.

At the time, the medicines regulator still had questions about the purity of the vaccine, according to Follow the Money. The leaked documents do not indicate whether these questions were answered before the EMA approved the vaccine on December 21.