The Committee on Budgetary Control adopted the report by Martina DLABAJOVÁ (ALDE, CZ) on discharge in respect of the implementation of the budget of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI 2) Joint Undertaking for the financial year 2017.
The committee called on the European Parliament to grant the joint undertakings Executive Director discharge in respect of the implementation of the Joint Undertakings budget for the financial year 2017.
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 2017, Members called on Parliament to approve the closure of the joint undertakings 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:
Budgetary and financial management
Members noted that the final 2017 budget available for the Seventh Framework Programme and Horizon 2020 programme implementation included commitment appropriations of EUR 322 396 498 and payment appropriations of EUR 206 372 367. The utilisation rates for commitment appropriations were 97.07 %.
They regretted, however, that payment appropriations were for the fourth consecutive year below 75 %: in 2017 they were at 71.96 %. This low implementation was mainly due to a reduction or postponement of clinical trials within some large and complex projects of the anti-microbial resistance and Ebola programmes and to delays in concluding grant agreements for calls under Horizon 2020. Members invited the IMI 2 Joint Undertaking to present updated information to the discharge authority and to improve the payment appropriations for the procedure next year.
Other observations
The report also contained a series of observations on performance and internal control systems. It noted in particular:
- the strategy to involve SMEs as IMI Joint Undertaking´s beneficiaries and thus contributing to the creation of a value chain as well as the involvement of the patients organisations;
- at the end of 2017 approximately 50 % of IMI Joint Undertaking´s projects had patient organisations engaged in some sort of way;
- by the end of 2017, the Commissions Common Support Centre had not finished specific developments in the Horizon 2020 grant management and monitoring tools to serve the IMI 2 Joint Undertakings reporting and processing needs for in-kind contributions. The IMI 2 JU should report to the discharge authority these results;
- a new website was launched in 2017, which is reflecting the suggestions of IMI Joint Undertaking´s main stakeholders and its own communication objectives and contributes to further visibility of the Joint Undertaking.