Euro Membership As European Meaning-Making: A Claims-Making Analysis of the German and British Public Spheres

A key concern of the Eurozone crisis has been the impact it is likely to have on member states’ broader interactions with the EU, with the shadows of ‘Brexit’ and ‘Grexit’ looming large over recent economic debates. This paper examines the role the Euro crisis has on support for the EU amongst political actors. It interrogates elite actor justifications of European policies in the context of the Euro crisis through claims-making analysis of public sphere debates in a sample of the online ‘quality’ and tabloid press in Germany and the UK (as representatives of countries within and outside the Eurozone). Claims-making analysis identifies expressions of political opinions or demands projected into the public sphere. Analysis of mediatised claims about the EU and the Euro can therefore tell us much about the perceived legitimacy of the single currency, and moreover the EU itself, in both countries. To what extent do actors legitimise or delegitimise the EU polity when discussing the specifics of the Eurozone crisis? The frames used by actors to justify their claims are also identified, allowing for an analysis of the systems of meaning about the EU present in the two countries.