Chair,

I have the honour to speak on behalf of the European Union. The candidate countries Türkiye, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova and Bosnia and Herzegovina[1]  and Georgia, the EFTA countries Iceland and Norway, members of the European Economic Area, as well as Armenia and San Marino, align themselves with this statement.

The EU takes note of the Director General’s report on the financial statements of the Agency. We thank the External Auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, for the audits of the IAEA’s Financial Statements for 2023.

We welcome the fact that, once again, an unqualified opinion has been given on the Agency’s accounts, which is testament to good management practices. We thank the Auditor for the financial and performance audit recommendations and note that the Secretariat agrees with them all.

We appreciate the Agency’s continued efforts to focus on the effective implementation of its programmatic activities, despite the challenging global economic environment. In this regard, we also hail the Regular Budget Fund’s utilisation rate of 99.9% in 2023. Furthermore, we take note of the increase in expenses and the reasoned explanation of this increase. We note that a significant part of the total savings concerns human resources. As adequate staffing is key to achieving the Agency’s goals, we encourage the Secretariat to identify efficiency measures also on travel expenses and operating costs.

We are reassured by the fact that the overall financial health of the Agency is stable. We welcome the decrease in the total outstanding Regular Budget contributions due to a higher collection rate in 2023 and payments towards prior year assessments. However, €52.6 million, representing 13% of the total Regular Budget assessment for 2023 is still outstanding.

We continue to call upon all Member States to meet their financial obligations in full and on time. This is essential, in order to ensure that the Agency can rely on dependable Regular Budget funding for all its core functions. Late payments also pose a serious liquidity risk to the organisation. We will comment on the After-Service Health Insurance (ASHI) under item 5.

Chair,

On the Report on the Implementation on Programme Support Costs (PSC), the EU and its Member States take note of the allocation of PSC to the various Major Programmes, with two thirds of PSC being allocated to MP 5 and one third to all other MPs. Noting the increased PSC income of €9.3 million in 2023, we continue to consider it important that PSC income is allocated to the Departments, and to the divisions within them, which incur project implementation expenditure.

With these comments, we take note of the Reports under this agenda item, as contained in GOV/2024/15 and GOV/INF/2024/5.

Thank you, Chair.

[1] North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.