2015 discharge: Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking

The Committee on Budgetary Control adopted the report by Miroslav POCHE (S&D, CZ) on discharge in respect of the implementation of the budget of the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking for the financial year 2015.

The committee called on the European Parliament to grant the joint undertaking’s Executive Director discharge in respect of the implementation of the joint undertaking’s budget for the financial year 2015.

Noting that the Court of Auditors issued a statement of assurance as to the reliability of the accounts and the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions for the financial year 2015, Members called on Parliament to approve the closure of the joint undertaking’s accounts.

They made, however, a number of recommendations that need to be taken into account when the discharge is granted. They may be summarised as follows:

Follow-up of 2014 discharge: Members took note that the Joint Undertaking disclosed performance indicators and indicators for monitoring cross-cutting issues in its annual activity report as required and that it achieved its targets in majority of them.

Budgetary and financial management: the Joint Undertaking’s final budget for 2015 included commitment appropriations of EUR 440 705 606 and payment appropriations of EUR 245 990 262. Members observed with satisfaction that the Joint Undertaking successfully faced the challenge of managing the highest budget in its history (amounting to 192 % in commitments of the 2014 budget and 166 % in payment appropriations of the 2014 budget). The commitment appropriations utilisation rate was 99.47 % (compared to 82.58 % in 2014) and the rate of payment appropriations was 75.44 % (compared to 90.19 % in 2014).

Members pointed out that private sector members experienced difficulties presenting their in-kind contribution figures by the deadline of 31 January and is concerned that this could become a recurring issue.

Other observations: the report also contained a series of observations on calls for procedure, ex-ante control procedures, ex-ante control procedures, ex-post audits, anti-fraud and internal controls.

Members appreciated that, in terms of widening participation, during the first year of Clean Sky 2 programme 76 new core partners joined the programme and took note of the progress made by the Joint Undertaking in involving SMEs in the programme by achieving 36% participation rate by the end 2016.

The Joint Undertaking is urged to improve the gender balance in its various bodies and to put forward a plan for realising that goal.