  The Thouless energy, $\Ec$ characterizes numerous quantities associated with
sensitivity to boundary conditions in diffusive mesoscopic conductors. What
happens to these quantities if the disorder strength is decreased and a
transition to the ballistic regime takes place? In the present analysis we
refute the intuitively plausible assumption that $\Ec$ loses its meaning as an
inverse diffusion time through the system at hand, and generally disorder
independent scales take over. Instead we find that a variety of (thermodynamic)
observables are still characterized by the Thouless energy.
