Comparing the Accountability Powers of Audit Institutions in a European Multilevel Governance Context

European public expenditure control provides an example of the complicated nature of the financial accountability within a multilevel governance setting. The European Court of Auditors (ECA) and the Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) play together an important role in this multi-level accountability system. The effective accountability power of these audit institutions, to control the public expenditure, is located at different levels of governance. Ultimate responsibility for accounting the budget lies at the EU level with the European Commission, the ECA and the European Parliament. But in practice, most of the budget is spent under what is known as 'shared management', with individual EU member states actually distributing and managing the funds, and controlling the expenditure. The paper provides a comparative analysis of the accountability powers of audit institutions in a European multilevel governance context. It presents an expanded view of the member state SAIs and the ECA by assessing their formal, institutional and their exercise of accountability powers. It then assesses the overall accountability performance of these audit institutions in a highly complex institutional multilevel framework; and it outlines the features of the evolving ‘interdependence’ accountability among the different governance levels. The analysis shows the varieties of accountability power in the EU, and identifies a number of properties of the multi-level system that causes gaps and overlaps in the financial accountability system.