Introduction

In the light of the democratic benefits believed to result from transparency, the persistence of secrecy appears troubling. Understood as the absence of constraints regarding citizens’ access to information, transparency in politics has become a symbol of good governance. “Transparency”, as Mark Fenster puts it, “appears to provide such a remarkable array of benefits that no right-thinking politician, administrator, policy wonk, or academic could be against it”. The increase of secrecy in governance is not only a matter of national politics, but also of the European supranational governance structures. The European economic policy area has also seen a decline in transparency and an increase in secrecy. The expansion of secrecy has posed new challenges for European democracies. The need to establish new mechanisms of oversight in response to the increasing powers of intelligence agencies is one example among many.