PURPOSE: to grant discharge to the SESAR Joint Undertaking for the financial year 2013.

NON LEGISLATIVE ACT: Decision (EU) 2015/1703 of the European Parliament on discharge in respect of the implementation of the budget of the SESAR Joint Undertaking for the financial year 2013.

CONTENT: with the present decision, the European Parliament grants discharge to the Executive Director of the SESAR Joint Undertaking for the implementation of the latter’s budget for the financial year 2013.

This decision is in line with the European Parliament's resolution adopted on 29 April 2015 and comprises a series of observations that form an integral part of the discharge decision (please refer to the summary of the opinion of 29 April 2015).

Amongst Parliament’s main observations, the latter called on SESAR Joint Undertaking to strengthen its links with the Clean Sky Joint Undertaking in order to improve the communication and reinforce synergies and complementarities, ensuring at the same time that there was no risk of overlapping between the activities of the two joint undertakings in question.

The European Parliament decided by 565 votes to 101, with 22 abstentions, to grant discharge to the Executive Director of the SESAR Joint Undertaking for the financial year 2013. The vote on the discharge decision approved the closure of the accounts (in accordance with Annex VI, Article 5(1) of the Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament).

Noting that the Court of Auditors stated that it has obtained reasonable assurances that the annual accounts of the Sesar Joint Undertaking for the financial year 2013 are reliable, and that the underlying transactions are legal and regular, Parliament adopted by 567 votes to 82, with 23 abstentions, a resolution containing a number of recommendations that form an integral part of the discharge decision and as well as the general recommendations that appear in the resolution on performance, financial management and control of EU agencies :

Budgetary and financial management : Parliament observed that that the Joint Undertaking's final budget for the financial year 2013 included commitment appropriations of EUR 64 300 000 and payment appropriations of EUR 105 400 000, with utilisation rates for commitment and payment appropriations at 99.6% and 94.7% respectively. It stressed that 100% of the Union and Eurocontrol contributions payable to the other 15 members under the third Multilateral Framework Agreement (MFA) of EUR 595 million had been committed. It also remarked that 55% of that amount, equalling EUR 316 million, had been paid out until 31 December 2013 while the remaining 45 % (EUR 279 million) was expected to be paid by 31 December 2016 . Members noted that the number of projects would be reduced to 250 through mergers of current projects, with the allocation of EUR 38 million to the funding of new operational activities. They 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 for in-kind contributions, together with an assessment by the Commission. Conflicts of interests : Parliament emphasised that the Joint Undertaking had put specific measures in place in order to prevent conflicts of interest with respect to its three key stakeholders: Administrative Board members, employees and experts.

Other observations : Parliament made a series of observations on the legal framework of the Joint Undertaking, and SESAR’s internal controls.

It believed that links between the Joint Undertaking and the Clean Sky Joint Undertaking should be strengthened . It invited the Commission to work with both joint undertakings in order to improve communication and reinforce synergies and complementarities, ensuring at the same time that there is no risk of overlapping.

Parliament acknowledged that SESAR disseminated research foreground by making available detailed information on deliverables and their processes to the relevant stakeholders on its extranet, as well as by publishing general details of 2013 deliverables in its 2013 annual activity report.

It called on the Joint Undertaking to submit a report to the discharge authority on the social-economic benefits of the projects already completed and for that report to be submitted to the discharge authority. It recalled the Joint Undertaking’s vital role in coordinating and implementing research into the SESAR project, which is a pillar project of the Single European Sky.

Lastly, Members recalled that Parliament had asked 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.

The Committee on Budgetary Control adopted the report by Anders Primdahl VISTISEN (ECR, DK) on discharge in respect of the implementation of the budget of the SESAR Joint Undertaking for the financial year 2013.

It called on the European Parliament to grant the Executive Director of SESAR Joint Undertaking discharge in respect of the implementation of the Joint Undertaking’s budget for the financial year 2013.

Noting that the Court of Auditors stated that it has obtained reasonable assurances that the annual accounts of SESAR for the financial year 2013 are reliable, and that the underlying transactions are legal and regular, Members called on the Parliament to approve the closure of SESAR’s accounts. They made, however, a number of recommendations that needed to be taken into account when the discharge is granted, in addition to the general recommendations that appear in the draft resolution on performance, financial management and control of EU agencies .

· Budgetary and financial management: Members observed that that the Joint Undertaking's final budget for the financial year 2013 included commitment appropriations of EUR 64 300 000 and payment appropriations of EUR 105 400 000, with utilisation rates for commitment and payment appropriations at 99.6 % and 94.7 % respectively. They stressed that 100 % of the Union and Eurocontrol contributions payable to the other 15 members under the third Multilateral Framework Agreement (MFA) of EUR 595 million had been committed. They also remarked that 55 % of that amount, equalling EUR 316 million, had been paid out until 31 December 2013 while the remaining 45 % (EUR 279 million) was expected to be paid by 31 December 2016 . Members noted that the number of projects would be reduced to 250 through mergers of current projects, with the allocation of EUR 38 million to the funding of new operational activities. They 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 for in-kind contributions, together with an assessment by the Commission.

· Conflicts of interests: the committee emphasised that the Joint Undertaking had put specific measures in place in order to prevent conflicts of interest with respect to its three key stakeholders: Administrative Board members, employees and experts.

Other observations: the committee made a series of observations on the legal framework of the Joint Undertaking, and SESAR’s internal controls.

It believed that links between the Joint Undertaking and the Clean Sky Joint Undertaking should be strengthened . It invited the Commission to work with both joint undertakings in order to improve communication and reinforce synergies and complementarities, ensuring at the same time that there is no risk of overlapping.

Members acknowledged that SESAR disseminated research foreground by making available detailed information on deliverables and their processes to the relevant stakeholders on its extranet, as well as by publishing general details of 2013 deliverables in its 2013 annual activity report.

They called on the Joint Undertaking to submit a report to the discharge authority on the social-economic benefits of the projects already completed and for that report to be submitted to the discharge authority.

Lastly, Members recalled that Parliament had asked 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.

Having examined the revenue and expenditure accounts for the financial year 2013 and the balance sheet at 31 December 2013 of the SESAR Joint Undertaking, and the report by the Court of Auditors on the annual accounts of the Joint Undertaking for the financial year 2013, accompanied by the Joint Undertaking's replies to the Court's observations, the Council recommended the European Parliament to give a discharge to the Executive Director of the Joint Undertaking in respect of the implementation of the budget for the financial year 2013.

The Council welcomed that the observations in the Court of Auditors' report in relation to the financial year 2013 do not call for any comments, and considered that the implementation of the budget of the Joint Undertaking is such as to allow a discharge to be given in respect of that implementation.

PURPOSE: presentation of the EU Court of Auditors’ report on the annual accounts of the SESAR Joint Undertaking for the financial year 2013, 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.

Statement of assurance : pursuant to the provisions of Article 287 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), the Court has audited:

the annual accounts of the SESAR Joint Undertaking, which comprise the financial statements and the reports on the implementation of the budget for the financial year ended 31 December 2013; the legality and regularity of the transactions underlying those accounts.

Opinion on the reliability of the accounts : in the Court’s opinion, the Joint Undertaking’s annual accounts present fairly, in all material respects, its financial position as at 31 December 2013 and the results of its operations and 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.

Opinion on the legality and regularity of the transactions underlying the accounts : in the Court’s opinion, the transactions underlying the annual accounts for the year ended 31 December 2013 are, in all material respects, legal and regular.

The audit approach taken by the Court comprises analytical audit procedures, testing of transactions at the level of the Joint Undertaking and an assessment of key controls of the supervisory and control systems. This is supplemented by evidence provided by the work of other auditors and an analysis of management representations and of annual activity reports.

The 2013 audit placed special emphasis on ex post audits.

At the end of this audit, the Court concluded the following :

internal audit function : in accordance with the coordinated strategic audit plan for the SJU for 2012-2014, the IAS carried out a limited review of the closing procedure applicable to grant management projects and a risk assessment of information technology; conflicts of interest : the SJU has put in place specific measures to prevent conflicts of interest with respect to its three key stakeholders: Administrative Board members, employees and experts. These are adequately documented in a comprehensive written procedure, which was updated in 2012.

Cross-cutting remarks for all the Joint undertakings : the prevention of conflicts of interest is addressed by most Joint Undertakings by the adoption of specific rules and by the development of tools to document all related information. An Interim Evaluation was performed over 2013 assessing all Joint Undertakings in terms of relevance, efficiency, effectiveness and research quality. The reports, while positive, also highlighted areas for further improvement. In general, all Joint Undertakings have produced reliable accounts but there is room for improvement.

Joint Undertaking’s replies : the Joint Undertaking replied point by point to all of the technical elements highlighted by the Court of Auditors. The second mid-term evaluation concluded that overall, the SJU undertook the tasks assigned to it during the evaluation period (2010-2012) effectively, thus contributing to the SESAR Programme. It is assessed that the SJU is operating according to the rules and procedures governing it.

As regards the activities of the Joint Undertaking in 2013 , the report refers to the Annual Activity Report 2013 which can be found at http://www.sesarju.eu/ .

It should be noted that the budget of the Joint Undertaking for 2013 amounted to EUR 84 141 537 in commitment appropriations and EUR 105 486 020 in payment appropriations.

PURPOSE: presentation by the Commission of the consolidated annual accounts of the European Union for the financial year 2013, as part of the 2013 discharge procedure.

Analysis of the accounts of the SESAR Joint Undertaking.

CONTENT: this Commission document sets out the consolidated annual accounts of the European Union for the financial year 2013 as prepared on the basis of the information presented by the institutions, organisations and bodies of the EU, in accordance with Article 129 (2) of the Financial Regulation applicable to the EU's General Budget, including the SESAR Joint Undertaking.

The document contains the figures on which the discharge procedure is based.

Discharge procedure of the EU Joint Undertakings : the EU Budget finances a wide range of policies and programmes throughout the EU. In accordance with the priorities set by the European Parliament and the Council in the multi-annual financial framework (MFF), the European Commission carries out specific programmes, activities and projects in the field with the technical support of some specialised agencies.

The consolidated annual accounts of the EU provide information on the activities of the institutions, agencies and other bodies of the EU from a budgetary and accrual accounting perspective.

The consolidated reports on the implementation of the general budget of the EU include the budget implementation of all Institutions. Agencies and Joint Undertakings (JUs) do not have a separate budget inside the EU budget ; and they are partially financed by a Commission budget subsidy.

Each JU is subject to its own discharge procedure.

SESAR : in 2013, the tasks and budget of the Joint Undertaking were as follows:

description of the tasks of the Joint Undertaking : SESAR Joint Undertaking, located in Brussels (BE), was set up in 2007 by Regulation (EC) 219/2007 for a period extending to 31 December 2017. The aim of this Joint Undertaking is to ensure the modernisation of the European air traffic management system and the rapid implementation of the European air traffic management Master Plan by coordinating and concentrating all relevant research and development efforts in the EU; accounts of the JU : the budget for SESAR's development phase is provided in equal parts by the EU, by Eurocontrol and by public and private partners. At 31 December 2013, the Commission held 42.26% of the ownership participation in SESAR. The total Commission contribution foreseen for SESAR (from 2007 to 2013) is EUR 700 million. The cumulative unrecognised share of losses is EUR 205 million.

Please also consult SESAR Joint Undertaking’s final accounts .