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1. The Joint Undertaking shall conclude a hosting agreement with each selected hosting entity prior to launching the procedure for the acquisition of a EuroHPC supercomputer.

2. The hosting agreement shall address in particular the following elements regarding the EuroHPC supercomputers:

(a) the rights and obligations during the procedure for acquisition of the supercomputer, including the acceptance tests of the supercomputer;

(b) the liability conditions for operating the supercomputer;

(c) the quality of service offered to the users when operating the supercomputer, as set out in the service level agreement;

(d) the plans regarding the supercomputer’s energy efficiency and environmental sustainability;

(e) the access conditions of the Union’s share of access time to the supercomputer, as decided by the Governing Board in accordance with Article 17;

(f) the accounting modalities of the access times;

(g) the share of the total cost of ownership that the hosting entity shall arrange to be covered by the Participating State where the hosting entity is established or by the Participating States in the hosting consortium;

(h) the conditions for the transfer of ownership referred to in Articles 11(5), 12(7), 13(6) and 14(6), including, in the case of EuroHPC supercomputers, provisions for the calculation of their residual value and for their decommissioning;

(i) the obligation of the hosting entity to provide access to the EuroHPC supercomputers, while ensuring the security of the supercomputers, the protection of personal data in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2016/679, the protection of privacy of electronic communications in accordance with Directive 2002/58/EC, the protection of trade secrets in accordance with Directive (EU) 2016/943 and the protection of confidentiality of other data covered by the obligation of professional secrecy;

(j) the obligation of the hosting entity to put in place a certified audit procedure covering the costs of operation of the EuroHPC supercomputer and the access times of the users;

(k) the obligation of the hosting entity to submit by 31 January of each year to the Governing Board an audit report and data on the use of access time in the previous financial year;

(l) the specific conditions applicable when the hosting entity operates a EuroHPC supercomputer for industrial usage or an AI-optimised supercomputer.

3. The hosting agreement shall be governed by Union law, supplemented, for any matter not covered by this Regulation or by other Union legal acts, by the law of the Member State where the hosting entity is established.

4. The hosting agreement shall contain an arbitration clause, within the meaning of Article 272 TFEU, granting jurisdiction over all matters covered by the hosting agreement to the Court of Justice of the European Union.

5. After the hosting agreement is concluded, and without prejudice to paragraph 2 of this Article, the Joint Undertaking, supported by the selected hosting entity, shall launch the procedures for the acquisition of the EuroHPC supercomputer in accordance with the financial rules of the Joint Undertaking referred to in Article 19.

6. For mid-range supercomputers, after the hosting agreement is concluded, the Joint Undertaking, or the hosting entity shall launch on behalf of both contracting parties the procedures for the acquisition of the EuroHPC supercomputer in accordance with the financial rules of the Joint Undertaking referred to in Article 19.