Europe in Electoral Campaigns: A Cross-National Analysis of the Media

Based on an analysis of newspapers from ten countries, this paper examines the nature of electoral campaigns for the June 2009 European elections. It assesses the second-order character of these campaigns as well as the degree of Europeanization of national public spheres. We show that even though these campaigns remained dominated by national actors and themes, Europe was not completely absent. However, the Europeanization of public spheres remains limited. Our analysis reveals that few references were made to EU-wide issues or to other Member States, the supranational actors were barely involved, and the campaigns lacked substantive debate.