EU Statement at the IAEA's Programme and Budget Committee on the Agency's Financial Statements for 2024, including the report of the External Auditor, 5 May 2025

Chair,

I have the honour to speak on behalf of the European Union and its Member States. The following countries align themselves with this statement: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Iceland, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Republic of Moldova, Serbia, Türkiye and Ukraine.

The EU and its Member States take 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 2024. 

We welcome the fact that an unqualified opinion has been given on the Agency’s accounts. We thank the Auditor for the financial and performance audit recommendations and note that the Secretariat agrees with them all. 

We take note of the information on a presentation error in Annex A5 regarding the funding of the capital regular budget. It is important that this error has been corrected and measures put in place to rule out a similar discrepancy occurring in future.

We appreciate the Agency’s continued efforts to focus on the effective implementation of its programmatic activities, despite persistent challenges in the global economic environment. In this regard, we welcome the Regular Budget Fund’s utilisation rate of 98.2% in 2024. We encourage the Secretariat to make economic, efficient and effective use of the resources available. Furthermore, we take note of the increase in expenses and the reasoned explanation of this increase. 

We are reassured by the fact that the overall financial health of the Agency is stable. We welcome the decrease of 10% in the total outstanding assessed and voluntary contributions due to a 97% collection rate of the 2024 assessed contributions and payments towards prior year assessments. However, €48.8 million, representing 11.5% of the total Regular Budget assessment for 2024, are 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 Regular Budget funding for all its core functions. Late payments 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 of 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 Major Programme 5 and one third to all other MPs. We welcome the closing of the gap between PSC income and expenditure. 

Thank you, Chair.