2013 discharge: ENIAC Joint Undertaking for the implementation of the Joint Technology Initiative on nanoelectronics

The European Parliament adopted by 565 votes to 106, with 20 abstentions, a decision to grant discharge to the Executive Director of the ENIAC Joint Undertaking in respect of the implementation of the budget of the ENIAC Joint Undertaking for the financial year 2013.

At the same time, Parliament approved the closure of ENIAC’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 recalled that the Court issued a qualified opinion on the legality and regularity of the transactions underlying the annual accounts, on the grounds of not being able to conclude whether or not the ex post audit strategy, which relied heavily on the National Funding Authorities (NFAs) auditing project cost claims, provided sufficient assurance with respect to the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions.

Noting from the Joint Undertaking that the Court would take steps in order to obtain sufficient assurances on the audits carried out by the NFAs, Members acknowledged that the ECSEL JTI was making further assessments of the national assurance systems following the merger of the Joint Undertaking and ARTEMIS Joint Undertaking.

The Joint Undertaking established the practical arrangements for ex post audits concerning the administrative agreements signed with the NFAs. Parliament welcomed the fact that in order to complement the information obtained by the Joint Undertaking, the Court acquired additional information directly from the NFAs in order to express an opinion on the legality and regularity of the transactions underlying the account.

It acknowledged from the Joint Undertaking that it made progress in implementing the action plan aimed at remedying the deficiencies identified by the Court in its qualified opinion. Parliament also 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.

Private sector contributions: Parliament ascertained from the Joint Undertaking that the Member States’ contributions were under the level of 1.8 as requested by the Joint Undertaking’s statute in order to comply with the limitations imposed by the State aid rules. For the industrial participants in large pilot line projects the total public funding could exceed 25 % while the Joint Undertaking’s statute required allocating the same reimbursement rate to each participant. Moreover, Members acknowledged that the lower contributions from the Members States were more than compensated by increased private sector contributions, carrying 65% of the total costs and thus reaching a very high leverage of the Union funding.

Prevention and management of conflicts of interests and transparency: Parliament noted that a comprehensive database including all identified information related to conflicts of interests as well as the measures taken has been established and is regularly maintained.

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 10 000 000 of Union grants shows a high productivity of its research results and that it is compliant with all requests expressed so far by the FP7 coordinators.