Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel says Bill Gates used the enormous financial resources of his foundation to exert what she described as “moral pressure” on governments to increase vaccine funding. Her account raises a wider question about democratic accountability when private foundations acquire influence comparable to governments, while Gates is separately defending a civil case in the Netherlands brought by plaintiffs alleging harm following COVID-19 vaccination
INR Report: Based on reporting by RT HERE
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has given an unusually candid account of the political influence accumulated by Bill Gates through the enormous financial resources of his philanthropic foundation.
Speaking on the Meckel & Matthes podcast released by Handelsblatt, Merkel said the phenomenon had concerned her long before today's debate about the political power of artificial intelligence companies.
Her example was Gates.
Merkel recalled that the resources controlled by his foundation exceeded the development budgets of some major industrialised countries and gave the billionaire access to national leaders normally reserved for other governments.
"He was suddenly received at least as warmly by some heads of state in the world as I was," Merkel said.
But her more consequential observation concerned what happened after Gates obtained that access.
"And then he also had the power, by virtue of his money, to exert moral pressure."
Merkel specifically connected that pressure to government spending on vaccination.
According to her account, governments that failed to provide what Gates considered sufficient funding for the international vaccine alliance Gavi could find themselves publicly portrayed as failing poorer countries.
"We were immediately in a bad light," Merkel recalled of occasions when governments did not provide sufficient funding.
She said Gates could subsequently tell African leaders that "Merkel had been stingy this year."
Her conclusion was striking:
"And with that, he had gained considerable power."
This Was More Than Philanthropy
The significance of Merkel's account is not that the Gates Foundation financed vaccination programmes. That has been publicly known for decades.
The significant disclosure is how a former head of one of Europe's largest governments describes the political consequences of that money.
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, was created as a public-private partnership involving governments, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank and private donors.
The Gates Foundation was one of its founding partners.
According to Gavi, the foundation's initial US$750 million commitment provided seed funding that helped launch the organisation.
Its cumulative commitment subsequently exceeded US$4 billion.
That scale of funding gave the foundation an extraordinary position within international public health.
Merkel's account provides an insider's description of how financial influence could translate into pressure upon governments themselves.
The distinction is important.
A private foundation advocating a policy is exercising freedom of expression.
A private foundation financing health programmes is engaging in philanthropy.
But when its financial power becomes sufficient to influence the spending priorities of sovereign governments, a different public-policy question emerges: who determines those priorities, elected governments accountable to voters, or private institutions capable of financially rewarding or publicly embarrassing governments according to whether they comply?
Germany Responded With Major Funding
Germany became one of Gavi's major government donors during Merkel's chancellorship.
Gavi's own donor records show that Merkel pledged €600 million for the organisation's 2016–2020 strategic period.
In January 2020, she announced another €600 million commitment covering 2021–2025.
Germany subsequently provided substantial additional funding for the COVAX programme created during the COVID-19 pandemic.
None of this establishes that Germany's decisions were improperly obtained.
Governments had independent public-health reasons for supporting vaccination programmes, and Gavi credits its programmes with dramatically expanding vaccine access in lower-income countries.
Merkel's comments nevertheless reveal something that cannot be dismissed as outside speculation: the former German Chancellor herself believed Gates' financial position allowed him to exert pressure on elected governments.
Gates Had His Own Priorities
Merkel also described a structural problem created by such concentrated private funding.
Governments must divide limited development budgets between competing priorities including health, education, infrastructure, food security and economic development.
Private philanthropists do not face the same democratic obligation.
Merkel recalled asking Gates why his foundation did not devote more resources to education.
According to her account, Gates replied that educational outcomes were harder to measure because teachers, students and national systems differed.
Vaccination and diseases such as malaria offered outcomes that were easier to quantify.
That left governments in a difficult position.
They still had to finance education and other public responsibilities while simultaneously facing pressure to devote additional resources to priorities favoured by an enormously wealthy private foundation.
"That's the kind of constraint you get caught in," Merkel said.
This is arguably the central issue exposed by her remarks.
The question is not whether vaccination is beneficial or whether Gates was entitled to spend his wealth promoting it.
It is whether private financial power can become large enough to influence the priorities of governments without the democratic accountability normally attached to political power.
The Dutch Case Adds Another Layer
Merkel's comments have particular contemporary relevance because Gates is separately a defendant in continuing civil litigation in the Netherlands involving COVID-19 vaccination.
The case should be described precisely.
It is not a criminal prosecution of Bill Gates, and no Dutch court has found that Gates caused vaccine injuries.
The proceedings are a civil action before the District Court of Northern Netherlands in Leeuwarden.
The case was originally brought by seven plaintiffs, one of whom has since died. The remaining plaintiffs allege that they suffered physical and psychological harm following COVID-19 vaccination and claim that Gates and numerous other defendants misled them concerning the vaccines and the pandemic.
Other defendants include former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, former government ministers, medical figures and Pfizer chief executive Albert Bourla.
Gates denies wrongdoing.
His lawyers previously challenged whether the Dutch court had jurisdiction over him because he lives in the United States. The court rejected that jurisdictional challenge in October 2024, allowing the civil claim against him to proceed in the Netherlands.
That decision did not determine whether the plaintiffs' substantive allegations were true.
The litigation subsequently continued.
A November 2025 ruling confirmed Gates as one of the defendants and dealt with procedural questions surrounding the plaintiffs' expanded claim. The court did not determine the underlying allegations at that stage.
The main proceeding is currently scheduled for a hearing on October 22, 2026.
What Merkel's Statement Does, and Does Not, Establish
This distinction is essential.
Merkel's statement does not establish that Gates caused vaccine injuries.
It does not establish that COVID-19 vaccines were improperly developed or approved.
And it does not prove the allegations being advanced by the Dutch plaintiffs.
What it does provide is independent testimony from a former head of government about something potentially relevant to the broader public-interest debate surrounding Gates: the scale and mechanism of his political influence in international vaccination policy.
Merkel is not describing an abstract theory about billionaire philanthropy.
She participated in the meetings.
She controlled one of the government budgets being pressured.
And her description is unusually explicit.
According to the former Chancellor, Gates possessed enough financial power to gain access comparable to national leaders and then use that position to exert what she herself called "moral pressure" on governments over vaccine expenditure.
That is a significant statement regardless of the eventual outcome of the Dutch litigation.
Influence Is Not the Same as Liability
There is also an important counterargument.
Gavi and the Gates Foundation can reasonably point to the public-health objectives behind their activities.
Gavi says its programmes have helped immunise more than a billion children since 2000, while vaccination campaigns against diseases including measles, polio and pneumococcal disease have been central components of international public-health policy.
Large philanthropic commitments can also enable programmes that governments either cannot or will not adequately finance.
The existence of influence therefore does not establish abuse of influence.
Nor does Merkel say Gates secretly controlled governments.
Her account describes something subtler: financial power creating political leverage.
That distinction strengthens rather than weakens the accountability question.
The Accountability Gap
Governments derive authority through elections, legislation and constitutional institutions.
International organisations operate through agreements between governments.
Private foundations operate differently.
Their leadership is not elected by the populations affected by their programmes. Their policy priorities do not require approval from voters. Their spending decisions are not ordinarily subject to parliamentary appropriations processes.
Yet enormous financial resources can give those organisations substantial access to governments and international institutions.
Merkel's account identifies the resulting imbalance.
Gates could decide where his foundation's money would be concentrated.
Governments still had to finance everything else.
But because the foundation controlled billions of dollars and occupied a central position in global health funding, it could also influence how governments allocated their own money.
The result was political power without the conventional mechanisms through which political power is normally held accountable.
COVID-19 Made the Question Much Bigger
That issue became substantially more important during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Gates Foundation worked closely with international health institutions involved in vaccine development, procurement and distribution.
Gavi was also one of the organisations behind COVAX, the international mechanism established to facilitate global access to COVID-19 vaccines.
This placed organisations substantially funded by private philanthropy within an international system making decisions that affected billions of people.
That does not establish that those decisions were improper.
But Merkel's comments provide a reason to examine how the system worked rather than treating philanthropic participation as politically neutral simply because its stated objective was public health.
Who financed the institutions?
Who determined priorities?
What access did major donors receive?
How much influence did they exercise over elected governments?
And what mechanisms existed for citizens to scrutinise or challenge that influence?
Those are governance questions independent of arguments about vaccine safety.
Does This Affect New Zealand?
Yes, because New Zealand participated in the same international public-health architecture.
During COVID-19, New Zealand governments relied heavily on international institutions, overseas regulators, pharmaceutical manufacturers and global public-health networks when making decisions involving vaccines, procurement and pandemic policy.
The relevant lesson from Merkel's disclosure is therefore broader than Bill Gates.
New Zealanders should be able to determine who influences public policy, what financial relationships exist between governments and international organisations, what evidence supports major health interventions, and where final decision-making authority resides.
Private expertise can assist governments.
Private philanthropy can finance valuable programmes.
International cooperation can be essential during genuine health emergencies.
But none of those propositions removes the need for democratic accountability.
When private organisations accumulate enough financial power to influence government spending, the public interest requires transparency about that influence.
Merkel's testimony is significant precisely because it comes from inside the room.
She is not claiming that Gates merely advocated for vaccines.
She says his wealth gave him enough political leverage to place governments under pressure to spend public money according to priorities he strongly promoted.
Whether that influence ultimately produced good or bad public-health outcomes is a separate question.
The governance question comes first: how much influence should any unelected private individual be able to exercise over the policy and spending decisions of sovereign governments?
The continuing Dutch litigation will determine its own questions according to evidence presented before that court.
Merkel's disclosure does not decide that case.
But it adds an important piece to the wider public record concerning the extraordinary influence Bill Gates and his foundation acquired within international vaccine policy.
Independent reporting. Original context. Credited sources.
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