Foreword 4

Chapter 1 General introduction 5

 The structure of our report 6

 The EU joint undertakings and assimilated bodies 7

  Type, number and location 7

  Financing, budget and staffing 9

  The EU Agencies Network 14

 The ECA’s mandate and the discharge 15

Chapter 2 Overview of audit results 16

 Introduction 17

 Reliability of the accounts 18

 Regularity of revenue and payments 19

  Revenue 21

  Payments 21

 Budget implementation 24

 Programme implementation 26

 Cases of suspected fraud detected during our audits 32

 Other ECA publications on the JUs 33

 Recommendations 34

Chapter 3 Statements of assurance on the EU joint undertakings and assimilated bodies 36

 3.1. Information in support of the statements of assurance 37

 3.2. Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research 3 Joint Undertaking (SESAR 3 JU) 40

 3.3. Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking (CA JU) 47

 3.4. Innovative Health Initiative Joint Undertaking (IHI) 53

 3.5. Clean Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (Clean H2) 60

 3.6. Chips Joint Undertaking (Chips JU) 67

 3.7. Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU) 75

 3.8. Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking (EU-Rail) 83

 3.9. European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) 90

 3.10. Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU) 99

 3.11. Global Health EDCTP3 Joint Undertaking (Global Health EDCTP3 JU) 106

 3.12. European Cybersecurity Competence Centre (ECCC) 113 Joint undertaking operating under Euratom 119

 3.13. European Joint Undertaking for ITER and the Development of Fusion Energy (F4E) 120

Annex I – List of EU JUs and assimilated bodies covered by this report 130

Annex II – Audit approach and methodology 131

Annex III – Other ECA publications on the joint undertakings and assimilated bodies (special reports, reviews and opinions) 137

Annex IV – Follow-up of previous years’ recommendations 139

Abbreviations 142