Friday, July 10, 2015
J103 (13 rue de l'Université)
Based on a study of the salience of European integration in British, French, and Spanish newspapers, this article contributes to the growing literature on the intrusion of EU-related issues on domestic agendas. Results confirm, first, the widespread assumption of a growing salience of these issues since the early 1990s in France and in Spain, but not in the UK. Second, exogenous explanatory factors of EUcoverage need to be reassessed against the background of endogenous (domestic) factors: election campaigns and political parties significantly modulate media attention to EU affairs. Finally, the role of Eurosceptic parties has been overestimated. Mainstream parties are major agendasetters in France and in the UK while regionalist parties play this role in Spain, where they gain agenda access under minority governments and use the EU to politicize issues that would be otherwise ignored by the governing party.