The economic and financial crisis has challenged the existing institutional capacity for audit, and therafter, accountability in the EU. Several institutions currently have joint responsibility for financial management and accountability in a multi-level system. Whereas traditional conceptions of financial accountability focus almost exclusively on the EU budget and its control by the European Court of Auditors (ECA), new and innovative solutions (eg. ESM) for coping with economic and financial crisis challenge the traditional paradigm of accountability. EU institutions have ventured into the unchartered waters of economic surveillance and financial assistance, using public money outside the EU budget. From a purely legal perspective, given the limits of its legal competences, the ECA risks being left behind, and the EU's legitimacy diminished, if the financial accountability can not be ensured. The ECA is itself currently undergoing a process of reform. It is reconsidering not only the many internal roles and responsibilities, but also its relationship with other institutions, particularly the European Parliament and Council, but also the anti-fraud office (OLAF). In order to combat crimes affecting the financial interests of the Union, the Treaty of Lisbon has paved the way for the establishment of a European Public Prosecutor’s Office. This panel examines these fast-moving developments and analyses the relationship between the different European and domestic institutional actors involved in the EU's multi-level financial accountability system. From a trans-disciplinary legal, political and administrative science perspective, the paper-givers ask if financial accountability will become more or less effective in this increasingly complex institutional context.