2021 discharge: Innovative Health Initiative Joint Undertaking (IHI JU)

The European Parliament decided to grant discharge to the Executive Director of the Innovative Health Initiative Joint Undertaking (before 30.11.2021 the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking) in respect of the implementation of its budget for the financial year 2021 and approve the closure of the Joint Undertaking’s accounts.

Noting that the Court of Auditors found that the annual accounts of the Joint Undertaking for the financial year 2021 present fairly the financial situation of the Joint Undertaking on 31 December 2021, as well as the results of its operations, Parliament adopted, by 568 votes to 53 with 6 abstentions, a resolution containing a series of observations which form an integral part of the discharge decision.

Budgetary and financial management

The final IHI Joint Undertaking available budget for 2021, including unused appropriations of previous years, which the IHI Joint Undertaking re-entered in the budget of the current year, assigned revenues and reallocations to the next year was EUR 11 million in commitment appropriations and EUR 210.4 million in payment appropriations. The budget execution of the commitment appropriations and the payment appropriations reached 75.91% and 95.39% respectively.

Parliament is concerned that the IHI Joint Undertaking’s level of achievement of members’ contribution targets is relatively low which is due to the long project duration required by the nature of the IHI Joint Undertaking’s research in the area of innovative health, and the scale of global consortia implementing projects. The IHI Joint Undertaking still has to pay EUR 84.3 million for ongoing Seventh Framework Programme projects in the coming years.

The implementation rate for the IHI Joint Undertaking’s 2021 payment budget available for Seventh Framework Programme projects was 80 %.

Other observations

The resolution also contains a series of observations on performance, staff and internal controls.

In particular, it noted the following:

- in 2021 the completion of the IMI2 Joint Undertaking project portfolio, with the signature of the last 15 IMI2 Joint Undertaking project grant agreements, was achieved;

- the IHI Joint Undertaking’s projects have generated 275 assets that completed a significant milestone during the project lifecycle (the target was 50);

- the staff establishment plan provides for 39 temporary agents, 15 contract agents and 2 seconded national experts (SNEs), in total 56 staff members. On 31 December 2021, there were 50 positions occupied. The Joint Undertaking has maintained a good geographical balance (20 different countries) and a good gender balance (22 women, 17 men) when external experts were consulted;

- systemic errors were found in the personnel costs declared by beneficiaries, in particular on the part of SMEs and new beneficiaries. Therefore, Parliament called on the Joint Undertaking should strengthen its internal control systems.