2013 discharge: Artemis Joint Undertaking to implement a Joint Technology Initiative in Embedded Computing Systems

The European Parliament adopted by 455 votes to 232, with 6 abstentions, a decision to grant discharge to the ARTEMIS Joint Undertaking for the financial year 2013.

In parallel, Parliament postponed the closure of the accounts of the ARTEMIS Joint Undertaking for the financial year 2013.

It also adopted by 633 votes to 42, with 6 abstentions, a series of general recommendations that appear in the resolution on performance, financial management and control of EU agencies:

• Budgetary and Financial Management: Parliament noted that payments made in 2013 relating to certificates of acceptance of costs issued by the national funding authorities ("NFAs") of the Member States amounted to EUR 11 700 000, which accounted for 57 % of the total operational payments. It was concerned that the Joint Undertaking did not assess the quality of those audits and that, by the end of March 2014, it had not received information on the audit strategies of seven out of 23 NFAs. The JU was therefore not in a position to assess whether ex post audits provide sufficient assurance as to the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions. Whilst welcoming the action plan aiming to remedy the deficiencies identified by the Court in its qualified opinion, Parliament looked forward to the successful implementation of the entire plan as well as to the Court's opinion on its outcome. It went on to note that the utilisation rate of payment appropriations was only 69%, while the utilisation rate for operational commitment appropriations was 99.4%. Furthermore, Members were concerned that there was poor information regarding the evaluation of the Member States' and Research and Development organisations' contributions corresponding to the actual level of Union's payments. In line with the information received, the contribution of the Member States was under the level of 1.8 as requested by the Joint Undertaking’s statute. Parliament called on the Joint Undertaking to submit a report to the discharge authority concerning the contributions of all members other than the Commission, including the application of the evaluation rules, together with an assessment by the Commission.
• Internal audit: Parliament was concerned that the Joint Undertaking had not set up an internal audit capability as required by its establishing Regulation. It noted moreover that although the mission charter of the Commission's Internal Audit Service (IAS) was adopted by the Governing Board on 25 November 2010, the financial rules of the Joint Undertaking had not been amended in order to include the provision of the model financial regulation referring to the powers of the Commission's Internal Audit Service.

Members acknowledged that the Joint Undertaking, along with the Clean Sky, ENIAC, FCH and IMI Joint Undertakings had been the subject of an IT risk assessment of their shared IT infrastructure performed by the IAS.

Parliament also made a series of observations on conflicts of interest at the JU and its legal framework. It called upon the Joint Undertaking to adopt comprehensive policies for the management of conflict of interest situations such as divestment of the interest by the public official, recusal of the public official from involvement in an affected decision-making process, restriction of access by the affected public official to particular information, rearrangement of the public official's duties or resignation of the public official from their office.

Other observations: Parliament ascertained that the Joint Undertaking had developed procedures in order to monitor the protection and dissemination of their research results at different project stages but from the Court's report, this should be further developed in order to fully meet the provisions of the Decision.

It called on the Joint Undertaking to submit a report to the discharge authority on the social-economic benefits of the already completed projects, and for that report to be submitted to the discharge authority together with an assessment by the Commission.

Parliament recalled that the discharge authority had previously requested the Court to draw up a special report on the capacity of the joint undertakings, together with their private partners, to ensure added value and efficient execution of Union research, technological development and demonstration programmes.