2013 discharge: Artemis Joint Undertaking to implement a Joint Technology Initiative in Embedded Computing Systems
The European Parliament adopted by 553 votes to 110, with 23 abstentions, a decision to grant discharge to the Executive Director of the ECSEL Joint Undertaking in respect of the implementation of the budget of the Artemis Joint Undertaking for the financial year 2013.
The vote on the discharge decision covers the closure of Artemis’s accounts.
Budgetary and financial management: Parliament recalled that the Court of Auditors stated that the 2013 annual accounts of the Joint Undertaking presented fairly, in all material respects, its financial position as of 31 December 2013 and the results of its operations and its cash flows for the year-end.
It acknowledged from the Joint Undertaking that the practical arrangements for ex post audits concerning the administrative agreements signed with the national funding authorities (“NFAs”) have been put in place. The Joint Undertaking stated that the 23 NFAs that shared information on their audit strategies represented 95 % of the total grants awarded. Members acknowledged that Artemis had made progress in implementing the action plan aimed at remedying the deficiencies identified by the Court in its qualified opinion.
At the same time, Parliament noted that the Joint Undertaking developed a new methodology for residual error rate estimation, similar to the one used by the Commission services in charge of co-managed funding.
Utilisation rate: Parliament recalled that the utilisation rate of payment appropriations after the end of year budget amendment was 69 %. The Joint Undertaking stated that the delay in issuing payment certificates by the NFAs was one of the main reasons for the low utilisation rate as the payments were executed without delay as soon as the national certificates were received.
Commitments from the Member States: Parliament ascertains from the Joint Undertaking that the contributions committed by Member States were at the level of 1.8 times the Union commitments. It acknowledged that the commitments by Member States had to be reduced below the 1.8 threshold when awarding the grants in order to comply with the limitations imposed by the State aid rules.
Evaluation of Artemis: Parliament noted that the Commission would carry out an evaluation to assess the ARTEMIS activity up to the date of the ECSEL JTI creation, as provided for in Council Regulation (EC) No 74/2008 setting up the ARTEMIS Joint Undertaking, to be considered for the discharge for the financial year 2014.
Prevention and management of conflicts of interests and transparency: the resolution noted that due to the merger with the ENIAC JU, the Comprehensive policy for the prevention and management of conflicts of interests of the ENIAC JU was also applicable to the Joint Undertaking. Furthermore, the procedures for managing situations of conflicts of interests, as well as the mechanism proceedings in the event of a violation of the rules, were part of the adopted policy.
Monitoring and reporting of research results: lastly, Parliament recalled that the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) Decision established a monitoring and reporting system related to the protection, dissemination and transfer of research results. It acknowledged from the Joint Undertaking that 211.5 publications and 16.6 patents per EUR 10 million of Union grants showed a high productivity of its research results and that it was compliant with all requests expressed so far by the FP7 coordinators.