The European Parliament decided to grant discharge to the Executive Director of the European GNSS Agency (GSA) for the financial year 2018 and to approve the closure of the accounts for the financial year in question.

Noting that the Court of Auditors has stated that it has obtained reasonable assurances that the Agency’s annual accounts for the financial year 2018 are reliable and that the underlying transactions are legal and regular, Parliament adopted by 629 votes to 56 with 7 abstentions, a resolution containing a series of recommendations, which form an integral part of the decision on discharge and which add to the general recommendations set out in the resolution on performance, financial management and control of EU agencies:

Agency’s financial statements

The final budget of the GNSS Agency for the financial year 2018 was EUR 32 230 582, representing an increase of 13.22 % compared to 2017.

Budget and financial management

The budget monitoring efforts during the financial year 2018 resulted in a budget implementation rate of 100 %, representing the same rate as in 2017. The execution rate of payment appropriations was 83.72 %, representing a decrease of 2.48 % compared to 2017.

In addition to its core budget, the Agency continued to manage a large amount of delegated budget in 2018 for the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), the Galileo Delegation Agreement, the Delegation Agreement for Public Regulated Service and the Horizon 2020 delegation agreement. A total of EUR 1 173 219 279 was committed under a delegated budget in 2018 and EUR 796 500 300.84 made in payments.

Parliament noted that the cancellations of carry-overs from 2017 to 2018 represents 3.25 % of the total amount carried over after a decrease of 2.05 % in comparison to 2017.

Other observations

Members also made a series of observations regarding performance, staff policy, procurement and conflicts of interest.

In particular, they noted that:

- the Agency’s Galileo and EGNOS programmes are now fully in their operational phase and that specifically with regard to Galileo, besides the successful launch in 2018 of the last four satellites before batch 3, the Agency completed the contract award activities;

- on 31 December 2018 the establishment plan was executed to 90.63 %, with 116 temporary agents appointed out of 128 that were authorised under the Union budget;

- the Agency should take measures with a view to ensuring better gender balance within its senior management;

- one former high-level official occupies an advisory role under the active senior initiative, without financial emoluments;

- the Agency adopted an internal whistleblowing policy in June 2018;

- as regards Brexit, the Agency sent letters to all contractors and beneficiaries of contracts and grants affected, requiring mitigating measures to be implemented by the end of October 2019, in particular to ensure that prime contractors and subcontractors are not entities established in the United Kingdom and that the backup site of the Galileo Security Monitoring Centre has been relocated from the United Kingdom to Spain.