PURPOSE: to grant discharge to the ECSEL Joint Undertaking for the financial year 2015.
NON-LEGISLATIVE ACT: Decision (EU) 2017/1735 of the European Parliament on discharge in respect of the implementation of the budget of the ECSEL Joint Undertaking for the financial year 2015.
CONTENT: with the present decision, the European Parliament grants discharge to the Executive Director of the ECSEL Joint Undertaking in respect of the implementation of the Joint Undertaking's budget for the financial year 2015.
This decision is in line with the European Parliament's resolution adopted on 27 April 2017 and comprises a series of observations that form an integral part of the discharge decision (please refer to the summary of the opinion of 27 April 2017).
Amongst Parliaments main observations in the resolution accompanying the discharge decision, the latter regretted that the Court has, once again, issued only a qualified opinion on the legality and regularity of the transactions underlying the annual accounts on the grounds of the administrative agreements signed with the national funding authorities (NFAs) regarding ex-post audits of project payments and the fact that the Joint Undertaking audit strategies relied heavily on the NFAs.
Parliament noted that, as a reaction to the postponement of the discharge decision in 2014, the Joint Undertaking asked the NFAs to provide written declarations that the implementation of their national procedures provided for a reasonable assurance of the legality and regularity of transactions. The discharge authority took the declarations of the NFAs into account during the postponed discharge process and granted discharge to the Joint Undertaking in October 2016.