Transparency as a new horizon for European democracies

Analyzing the success of transparency policies in EU institutions and Member States, this article first looks at the elements that have contributed, over the past twenty years, to renewing the legitimacy but also the meaning of this slogan: its promotion by international organizations, the development of digital technologies, its affinity with new public management reforms and their criticism of representative democracies. This article tries then to identify various uses of transparency. It shows that transparency can serve different, and even adverse, strategies of (re) legitimization, communication, control or even of scandal, depending in particular on the positions – objects, users, guardians – occupied by the promoters of transparency. It concludes by examining its effects: between the rise of transparency and the development of new rights to secrecy, what are the consequences for processes of production of, and access to knowledge? How transparency transform the ways of making public policies?