European Court of Auditors gives green light to 2023 accounts of Joint Undertakings

On 13 November 2024, the European Court of Auditors gave a favourable opinion on the 2023 accounts of 12 Joint Undertakings under Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe. However, the auditors point to some areas requiring extra care, such as securing contributions from private partners up to the agreed levels.

The auditors report significant risks concerning the ‘Fusion for Energy’ Joint Undertaking responsible for the European contribution to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project. In particular, they believe that the revision of the ITER project milestones to take account of significant technical changes and cost increases will have a considerable impact on the cost of completing delivery obligations, now estimated at €21.2 billion.

The auditors also note that both Circular Bio-Based Europe (CBE) and European High-Performance Computing (EuroHPC) failed to achieve their targets for private-member in-kind contributions to Horizon 2020 projects. For EuroHPC in particular, the auditors point to a significant risk of it not attaining its private-member contribution targets within the Horizon and Digital Europe programmes, and recommend that they be reassessed. In addition, Clean Aviation, Chips, and EuroHPC had requested additional EU financial contributions that were significantly above their cash needs. This practice not only steers EU financial resources away from other EU activities, but also indicates poor cash management, the auditors note.

The Smart Networks and Services and Global Health Joint Undertakings (EDCTP3) became financially autonomous in the last quarter of 2023 and were audited by the Court for the first time.

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