The question of administrative legitimacy understood as the quest for a theory about the role and functions of public administration in contemporary constitutional democracies remains fundamentally contested. In the context of the EU post-national political system, however, it becomes particularly acute especially in a post-crisis context. This is mainly due to the functional demands of the EU market integration; increasing “out-sourcing” of decision-making to both the EU executive and regulatory experts; as well as the contested democratic credentials of and justifications for such delegation away not only from EU legislature, but also from national democratic constituencies. There is a clear tension both in theory and practice between technocratic understandings of EU administrative legitimacy and those accounts that demand a stronger “democratization” of EU administrative governance (i.e. stronger embeddedness of technocratic decision-making in political processes). This panel aims to envisage the future of the EU public administration by addressing these competing views about EU administrative legitimacy from different disciplinary perspectives. The papers will offer 1) a constitutional perspective on EU administrative legitimacy through procedures with a particular focus on the problem of discretion in EU administrative law; 2) an analysis of EU administrative legitimacy from the viewpoint of EU risk regulation with a particular focus on the problem of expertise; 3) an analysis of the crisis of EU administrative governance from a political economic perspective; and 4) an examination of the response to the Eurozone crisis from the perspective of administrative legitimacy.