2012 discharge: SESAR Joint Undertaking to develop the new generation European air traffic management system
PURPOSE: presentation of the EU Court of Auditors’ report on the annual accounts of the SESAR Joint Undertaking, together with the Joint Undertaking’s replies.
CONTENT: in accordance with the tasks conferred on the Court of Auditors by the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the Court presents to the European Parliament and to the Council, in the context of the discharge procedure, a Statement of Assurance as to the reliability of the annual accounts of each institution, body or agency of the EU, and the legality and regularity of the transactions underlying them, on the basis of an independent external audit.
This audit concerned, amongst others, the annual accounts of the SESAR Joint Undertaking.
In the Court’s opinion, the SESAR Joint Undertaking’s Annual Accounts fairly present, in all material respects, its financial position as of 31 December 2012 and the results of its operations and its cash flows for the year then ended, in accordance with the provisions of its financial rules and the accounting rules adopted by the Commission’s accounting officer.
It also considers that the transactions underlying the annual accounts of the Authority for the financial year ended 31 December 2012 are, in all material respects, legal and regular.
The report confirms that the SESAR Joint Undertaking’s 2012 budget amounted to EUR 156 564 786 in commitments and EUR 124 198 884 in payments.
The report also makes a series of observations on the budgetary and financial management of the Joint Undertaking, accompanied by the latter’s response. The main observations may be summarised as follows:
Court’s comments: the Court notes that improvements are required in the following ex ante control areas: (i) improvements could be made to the documentation of controls on the monitoring of project deliverables, project performance analysis, subcontractor monitoring and cost claim certificates; (ii) a technical review report produced by external experts at an airborne equipment manufacturer in relation to projects carried out by it for the SESAR and Clean Sky Joint Undertakings concluded that improvements could be made to the exchange of data and results between the two Joint Undertakings.
Joint Undertaking’s replies: SESAR states that it is committed towards the improvement of its system and procedures allocating the resources available to enhance its risk management, controls and governance processes to ensure the achievement of the SESAR programme objectives.
On an operational level, the Court’s report stated that at 31 December 2012, the SESAR Joint Undertaking development phase consisted of work by 16 members on programme activities involving more than 100 private and public entities and subcontractors. Of the 336 projects selected, 312 (92.8%) were being implemented.
As regards the activities of the Joint Undertaking in 2012, the report refers to the Annual Activity Report 2012 which can be found at http://www.sesarju.eu/.