Europe in electoral campaign : a cross-national analysis of the media Politique européenne, n° 31, 2010, p. 173-203

By means of a analysis of newspapers from ten countries, this article analyzes the nature of electoral campaigns for the June 2009 European Election. It assesses the "second-order" character of these campaigns and the degree of Europeanization of the national public spheres. We demonstrate 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 about EU issues and about other Member states, that the supranational actors were hardly involved and that the campaigns lacked substantive debates.