ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses transparency as a core value in the economic governance after the 2010 “European crisis”. The main narratives of the European Union (EU) institutions consider a stricter macroeconomic and budgetary surveillance necessary to foster trust between Member States and in the financial markets. The highly conflictual context of the “Greek crisis” provides a striking illustration of the oscillation of EU policies between ethics and politics. The argument is that transparency is, on its own, non-political, although it can lead to specific forms of politicization. First, transparency policies seek to circumvent or even oppose representative democracy. It is a means to constrain bad “behaviours” occurring in the indebted Member States. Second, because expertise is presented as more transparent and reliable than politics, and therefore more efficient, it justifies a greater reliance on experts’ solutions at the expense of democratically reached decisions. Third, transparency policies also create resistances when they are perceived as only pseudo-neutral, “veiled”politics. Indeed, in the case of the 2010 crisis, the use of transparency in the sense of a political value has backfired on the institutions piloting the crisis-induced reforms, as it has been employed to criticize the secrecy and urgency of their decision-making processes.
