JCMS 2023 Volume 61. Number 5. pp. 1194–1210 DOI: 10.1111/jcms.

13456

Peace, Prosperity and Protection: Narratives of Integration and

the ‘Justification Jungle’ of Europe’s Public Spheres
PIETER DE WILDE
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim

Abstract
The European Union (EU) is in search of a new narrative to create a sense of common purpose, but
it is unclear around which values that narrative should be built. To analyse how different narratives
resonate in Europe’s public spheres, this article presents a novel dataset based on claims analysis
of newspaper articles from Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland and Denmark between 2012 and
2019 on the issues of migration, the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), trade and counterter-
rorism. Descriptive and logistic regression analyses show how different frames have been used for
various policy agendas. This reveals considerable variation, but comparatively low levels of ex-
plained variance. Europe’s public spheres can thus be described as a ‘justification jungle’, where
many actors use a range of arguments to back up diverging political demands. This poses a formi-
dable obstacle to any single narrative of European integration.

Keywords: narrative; European integration; claims analysis; public sphere; European Union

Introduction
As Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, a remarkable unity in discourse throughout
the European Union (EU) appeared. Across the member states, there was a focus in public
debate on the biggest war on the continent since 1945, outrage at Russian aggression and
an outpouring of support for Ukraine. German Chancellor Olav Scholz spoke of a
‘Zeitenwende’. A political scramble ensued to increase the security of the continent
through strategic autonomy. Yet, within weeks, this unity in discourse receded. Where
the focus in the Baltics and Poland remained on the atrocities in Ukraine and ensuing se-
curity concerns, the Hungarian and French elections were heavily influenced by eco-
nomic concerns about inflation. Meanwhile, the German debate turned increasingly in-
wards, and its blocking of EU sanctions on SWIFT and oil and gas revealed a lack of
leadership. Although the war continued to rage in Ukraine with increasing numbers of ca-
sualties and war crimes, the focus and unity in the European public political debate melted
away and made way for a cacophony of different arguments and concerns. The narrative
of strategic autonomy may have already faltered before it really got started. That would
not be surprising, given what has happened with earlier narratives of European integration
(Nicolaidis and Howse 2002; Manners and Murray 2016; Bouza Garcia 2017; McMahon
and Kaiser 2021).
Over the years, a range of narratives have been used to justify European integration,
from the ‘Nobel’ narrative that European unification is a peace project, to the economic
narrative that Europe brings prosperity and efficient markets, to a social Europe, a green
Europe and various forms of a global Europe (cf. Manners and Murray 2016). The narra-
tive that European integration is a peace project arguably lost persuasiveness during the

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Ltd.
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Peace, prosperity and protection 1195

course of the 1990s and 2000s (Manners and Murray 2016, p. 188–189). Younger gener-
ations took peace in Europe for granted. The new ‘economic Europe’ narrative focused on
the single market as a project to create scales of efficiency and prosperity, and this culmi-
nated in the Lisbon Agenda to make Europe ‘the most competitive and dynamic
knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with
more and better jobs and greater social cohesion’.1
With the advent of the Euro crisis, however, this second narrative suffered a major
credibility crisis: instead of prosperity, there was unemployment. Yet, the Euro crisis
did not result in a uniform debate across the EU. Whilst it generated a discussion of the
lack of democracy in the south, where EMU rules were considered too rigid and too
strictly imposed by northern member states and the Troika, it generated a narrative of be-
trayal and prodigality in the north, where southern member states were depicted as unre-
liable and taking advantage of northern solidarity (Risse 2015). One of the most recent
attempts to underpin a unifying sense of purpose through narrative came with the instal-
ment of the new Von der Leyen Commission and her controversial attempt to appoint a
‘European Commissioner for the Protection of Our European Way of Life’, who, in prac-
tice, would be a Commissioner for Migration (Foret and Trino 2022). The word ‘protec-
tion’ sounded too xenophobic for the European Parliament, and Von der Leyen was
forced to make a minor adjustment. Despite this minor defeat at the European Parliament,
the narrative of a ‘Europe that protects’ (Une Europe qui protège) was born and pushed by
French President Emmanuel Macron in particular.2 This may be seen as a response to the
rise of far-right parties, particularly in the wake of the 2015–2016 refugee crisis and a re-
incarnation of the Fortress Europe narrative (Manners and Murray 2016, p. 198). Besides
acknowledging opposition to immigration, it also resonated with French fears about glob-
alisation and the loss of manufacturing and agricultural jobs.
This brief overview illustrates the existence of various existing narratives of integra-
tion. Pro-Europeans have already tried out many different stories, and yet the search for
a new narrative and its power to unify Europeans and provide a common sense of purpose
continues. This article sets out to shed new light on the holy grail of a new narrative for
European integration. This article asks the question: To what extent are ‘narrative themes’
such as peace, prosperity and protection used to justify EU policies and competencies in
political claims? More broadly, who is providing which frame for what policy agenda in
Europe’s public spheres? This article builds on the premise that the success or failure of
any narrative of integration is partially dependent on pre-existing debates in Europe’s
public spheres. These debates determine with which kind of policy agenda a narrative
of integration will be associated. It studies narratives through the frequency and ways
in which European policy questions are framed. This is measured as part of a claims anal-
ysis (Koopmans and Statham 1999). This analysis gives insights into how various narra-
tives are likely to be interpreted – by power of association – as they resonate or fail to
resonate with various existing political narratives in different member states on widely
different policy issues.

1
Source: https://doi.org/10.18712/NSD-NSD3047-V3 (accessed 25.08.2021).
2
Source: https://www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/2019/03/05/inauguration-du-college-du-renseignement-en-europe
(accessed 25.08.2021).

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Ltd.
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1196 Pieter de Wilde

The article then presents a comparative analysis of claims about European policy in
public discourse by elite and non-elite actors. It analyses four diverse policy fields, de-
signed to capture a variety of different trade-offs and concerns in key European policy
areas: migration, trade, counterterrorism and the Economic and Monetary Union
(EMU). To analyse the resonance of different narratives in the public sphere, the article
proceeds to discuss who contributes to such debates, what their demands are and how
such demands are framed. The conclusion is that Europe’s public spheres can best be de-
scribed as a ‘justification jungle’ in which actors can argue for anything through an appeal
to a wide range of different values. The implication is that any single narrative for Euro-
pean integration is unlikely to unite Europe for any prolonged period of time.

1. Theorising Narratives of European Integration

There is broad agreement in the literature that various narratives of European integration
are and have been in existence. Manners and Murray (2016) identified six different nar-
ratives: (1) the ‘Nobel narrative’ of the EU as a peace project; (2) the ‘new narrative’,
which is not well delineated, but is perhaps about the principles of human rights, democ-
racy and rule of law centrally; 3) ‘economic Europe’ centred around the single market,
prosperity, EMU and cohesion funds, but at the same time containing technocratic argu-
ments about efficiency; (4) ‘social Europe’, focusing on social policy, solidarity, worker
protection and employment; (5) ‘green Europe’, with a focus on sustainable development,
including climate change policy, as well as environmental and nature protection; and (6)
‘global Europe’, focusing on the EU as a regional and global player, situated in its geopo-
litical environment. Yet, whilst proposing this typology of six narratives, Manners and
Murray (2016) immediately acknowledged that many of these narratives are not so clear
cut. The ‘new narrative’ was never really uniform, whilst the ‘economic narrative’ con-
tains arguments about both economic prosperity and technocratic efficiency, and is there-
fore perhaps two narratives rather than one. The ‘global narrative’ contains at least three
sub-narratives: that of a neoliberal Europe about free trade; the ‘taming globalization’ nar-
rative, which is close to the social Europe agenda; and the ‘Fortress Europe’ narrative,
which was originally about economic protectionism but has become increasingly associ-
ated with limiting immigration over time. In contrast to Manners and Murray, Eder (2009)
identified three narratives: (1) a supranational Europe around the ‘Jean Monnet success
story’ of building up supranational institutions and a European legal order; (2) a
post-national Europe echoing the Nobel narrative, but with a greater role for
non-institutional actors and rituals, such as Holocaust remembrance; and (3) a transna-
tional Europe, focusing on cultural diversity and exchanges. The Erasmus project of stu-
dent exchanges echoes this latter narrative.
Narratives are not just employed to support or underpin the European project: they are
also used to attack and undermine it (McMahon and Kaiser 2021). Counter-narratives in-
clude (1) ‘bureaucratic Europe’, focusing on the EU as a Kafkaesque maze of red tape and
technocracy; (2) ‘empire Europe’ portraying the EU as an unaccountable imperial
straightjacket impeding on member state sovereignty and national self-determination;
(3) ‘wasteful Europe’, highlighting corruption and arguing the EU misspends taxpayers’
money (cf. Blair in Schweiger 2007, p. 82); and (4) ‘capitalist Europe’, articulating the
influence of business lobbyists and big industry in Brussels as disproportional (Van
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Peace, prosperity and protection 1197

Apeldoorn 2002). Several of these counter-narratives draw on similar themes, such as the
EU being undemocratic, unaccountable and run by bureaucrats rather than elected
politicians.
Four key lessons from the literature on the narratives and counter-narratives of Euro-
pean integration inform the present article. First, much of the construction of narratives
is about framing and linking a political programme, such as pooling of sovereignty, to
an ‘organizing idea’ (Gamson 2004, p. 245) to make sense of what is at stake. This is done
through discursively linking arguments for more Europe, less Europe or a different
Europe to ‘narrative themes’ (McMahon and Kaiser 2021, p. 7) such as peace, prosperity,
democracy, sustainability, solidarity or sovereignty. Second, both institutional and societal
actors contribute to the creation and dissemination of narratives, including, notably, EU
institutions, national politicians and public intellectuals, who create various ‘narrative net-
works’, which may or may not engage with each other, thus creating both the possibility
of uniform narratives across the EU and of isolated narratives, resonating only in parts of
Europe’s segmented public spheres (Eder 2009; Bouza Garcia 2017). Third, it is an open
empirical question which narrative themes are connected with which political
programmes and whether this is uniform across member states and issues. Fourth, there
remains a keen political interest – particularly, but not exclusively, within the European
Commission – to search for a single (new) narrative to support the European project, as
evidenced by Von der Leyen’s flirtation with ‘Our European Way of Life’, Macron’s
launch of ‘l’Europe qui protège’ and the ‘strategic autonomy’ narrative following
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In light of these four lessons, this article proceeds with a
systematic analysis of different arguments made in Europe’s public spheres. Are demands
for certain policies or political programmes systematically linked to particular narrative
themes? If so, where and by whom? What does this empirical pattern ultimately tell us
about the prospects of a new narrative of European integration?
To conduct this systematic comparative analysis, this article draws on political
claims-making (Koopmans and Statham 1999) and presents a novel database of claims
made in newspapers in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland and Denmark on the issues
of migration, counterterrorism, the EMU and trade between 2012 and 2019. This design
captures a wide range of issues that embody different political trade-offs and questions of
distribution and redistribution. They do so among member states with different back-
grounds, economic and political situations and exposure to external shocks, over a longer
period of time. It is thus designed to maximise possible variation in narrative resonance.
Any systematic pattern found to hold across issues and space would thus be a strong in-
dicator of the resonance of a particular narrative and a key informative stepping stone for
any political entrepreneur considering championing such a narrative.

Patterns across Public Spheres

Because narratives are sense-making tools, instrumental in establishing the legitimacy of
the EU, their power is limited if they do not make sense in similar ways across member
states (Eder 2009; Manners and Murray 2016, p. 188; Bouza Garcia 2017). Hence,
whether framing happens in similar patterns across the public spheres of member states
is a key indication of the legitimating power of the narratives they reflect. Several
large-scale comparative studies have found similarities across EU member states in
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1198 Pieter de Wilde

how EU politics and European integration are framed. This would lead us to expect sim-
ilarities in framing patterns across countries. Diez Medrano and Gray (2010) have
analysed media debates in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, the
Netherlands and Switzerland. They sampled newspaper articles on the policy issues of ag-
riculture, monetary politics, troop deployment, immigration politics, retirement and pen-
sions, education and European integration in terms of enlargement, institutional reform
and constitutional discussions between 1990 and 2002. Using claims analysis (Koopmans
and Statham 1999), they analysed how various actors have covered their arguments in the
news frame when making claims on any of the above-mentioned issues. Their main con-
clusion was to find relative similarities across time, space and policy fields:
Actors in the public sphere … represent the European Union as a mainly economic insti-
tution formed by democratic countries. The European Union is also described as limiting
the states’ sovereignty and, to a slightly lesser degree, as contributing to peace and secu-
rity in Europe. (Diez Medrano and Gray 2010, p. 218)
Whilst also finding similarities across countries and issues, Helbling (2014) found uni-
versalistic values such as democracy, freedom and equality to be more dominant as a
frame than economic concerns. Studying migration debates, Helbling (2014) concluded
that, ‘if there is a dominant frame it is not nationalistic, economic, or security argumenta-
tion, as is often suggested in the current body of literature. Rather, moral-universal argu-
ments seem to be applied most often’ (Helbling 2014, p. 37). Commonalities are also
highlighted by Cinalli et al. (2021, p. 82) in their study of the 2015–2016 refugee crisis.
They concluded that ‘we can speak of a European field of solidarity contestation where
attention was focused on the same events, common lines of arguments were developed,
and positions were shared by different segments of the public’ (p. 82). Looking at the de-
bates around the economic situation in the Euro crisis, Kaiser and Kleinen-von
Königslöw (2017) showed how German and Spanish actors framed the challenges at hand
in similar ways, contributing to the Europeanisation of public spheres. This does not,
however, preclude differences at more detailed level. Whilst Spanish actors predomi-
nantly framed the Euro crisis as a banking crisis, German actors framed it more as a sov-
ereign debt crisis (Kaiser and Kleinen-von Königslöw 2017, p. 810).
Whilst these studies have argued that there are commonalities across countries, they
differ in terms of which frames dominate. It may well be the result of methodological
choices whether it is economic prosperity, moral-universal values, solidarity or yet an-
other frame that dominates. The finding by Helbling (2014) that universalistic values
dominate may be a product of his focus on migration policy. Comparing seven policy
areas, the study by Diez Medrano and Gray (2010) yielded different findings. When the
study was conducted may also affect the findings. The height of the Euro crisis likely am-
plified different concerns than the height of the refugee crisis. Furthermore, as indicated
by Kaiser and Kleinen-von Königslöw (2017), there may be broad similarities in framing
at the aggregate level, when studying meta-frames such as the economy, equality, freedom
or solidarity. Yet, at a more detailed level – such as whether the Euro crisis is primarily a
banking or a sovereign debt crisis – there may also be clear differences from country to
country. Notwithstanding such diverse findings, which may or may not be the result of
research design and methodological choices, these projects of large-scale quantitative
comparative content analysis share the finding that many different frames are used to

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Peace, prosperity and protection 1199

make sense of EU politics in the news and that the vast majority of these frames are used
to make both positive and negative evaluations of the EU and the integration project.

Differences across Actors and Nationalities

The above-mentioned studies on the framing of European politics in the public sphere
document differences across actor types and nationalities. To begin with, several studies
have indicated that the partisan affiliation of actors influences their framing of issues,
such as European integration (Helbling et al. 2010) and immigration (Helbling 2014):
‘While some parties support European integration for economic reasons, others see the
cultural potential, and in many circumstances, the EU is perceived in terms of political ef-
ficiency and efficacy’ (Helbling et al. 2010, p. 517). The radical left tends to employ uni-
versal moral arguments more often than other parties, and the radical right
disproportionally uses nationalistic frames. Based on their study of the debates on the ref-
ugee crisis in many European countries, Cinalli et al. (2021, p. 171) concurred and con-
cluded that ‘[d]omestic partisan cleavages … matter more than country cleavages to ex-
plain solidarity attitudes towards refugees’ (p. 171). These differences, however, can be
expected to be relative. Political actors strategically choose one or two frames to empha-
sise but also address the frames of their opponents (Hänggli and Kriesi 2012). Yet even if,
in line with framing theory, partisan actors adopt one or two frames as their dominant line
of justification, ‘public debate and contestation in the news media over the “refugee cri-
sis” emerged as a dynamic process of cultural exchange between European governments,
oppositional parties, transnational civil society and segments of the public’ (Cinalli
et al. 2021, p. 82). A related study has made a similar argument, whilst at the same time
pointing out the singularity of UK actors:
collective actors in the European Union largely share a common frame on European in-
tegration issues. This conclusion points to the existence of a shared political culture
within Europe. The main contrast observed in this analysis is that between the United
Kingdom and the rest of the countries included in this study. British political actors em-
phasize sovereignty and national interests in their approach to the European Union and
fail to see the European Union as a group of countries sharing the same values. (Diez
Medrano and Gray 2010, p. 218)
It thus makes sense to compare different nationalities within the EU to see to what ex-
tent different narratives resonate across the region. The function and level at which actors
operate also matter. Representatives of the EU can be expected to disproportionally de-
fend a European perspective and advocate common European solutions. For example,
Cinalli et al. (2021, p. 83) argued that ‘data reveal a considerable gap between the more
cosmopolitan standing of the EU, on the one hand, against the national revival across
member states, on the other’ (p. 83). More specifically discussing how different frames
are used by different actors to support different policy preferences, they argued that:
rights-based justifications are often used when claiming solidarity with refugees, while
the opposite is true for interest- and identity-based justifications. This finding corrobo-
rates the opposition between supranationalism and renationalisation processes: National
governments often refused to comply with EU resettlement schemes so as to defend their
interests and identities, while EU actors favoured a solution based on universal human
rights. (Cinalli et al. 2021, p. 83)

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1200 Pieter de Wilde

To sum up, in mediated debates on various policy fields in which the EU has diverging
degrees of competence, a wide array of different frames comes to the fore. The literature
on framing Europe hereby echoes the literature on narratives of European integration,
documenting a plurality of frames frequently used in public debates, with multiple frames
used to defend a single political demand and the same frame used to defend different –
even contradictory – political demands. This plurality stems not only from the fact that
different issues have different public goods and trade-offs at stake but also because a di-
verse range of collective actors contribute. We can expect there to be commonalities
across borders, with economic frames, universal value frames and solidarity arguments
frequently voiced across member states. No frame is likely to be monopolised by a single
actor, but there may be degrees of ownership, which are likely to be more influenced by
the ideology of the actor making the claims than by their nationality, as differences in
framing are reported to diverge more across partisan lines and between national and
EU-level actors than across member states.

2. Studying Narratives through Claims Analysis

This article relies on claims analysis (Koopmans and Statham 1999) on newspaper articles
on four issues – migration, counterterrorism, the EMU and trade – in Germany, France,
Italy, Spain, Denmark and Poland, published between 2012 and 2019. Newspaper articles
were sampled from the LexisNexis and Factiva databases using issue-based keyword
sampling around issue-specific episodes of contention in the period of 2012–2019. One
conservative and one liberal newspaper were sampled in each country: FAZ and SZ in
Germany, Figaro and Le Monde in France, Corriera della Serra and La Repubblica in
Italy, ABC and El Pais in Spain, Rzeczpospolita and Gazeta Wyborcza in Poland and
Jyllands-Posten and Politiken in Denmark. More details on sampling can be found in
the online codebook (Gora and De Wilde 2022). Beyond claims on any of the four policy
areas, claims about the overarching constitutional issue of European integration are also
coded, if they were made in any of the sampled newspaper articles. What follows is a brief
discussion on the key aspects of the claims analysis and the core variables used in the sub-
sequent analyses. The online codebook (Gora and De Wilde 2022) contains a detailed dis-
cussion on how claims are defined, identified and coded; examples; and information on
intercoder reliability.
Claims always contain three key elements: a claimant (or maker), an issue and a posi-
tion. In this most basic form, claims come to the fore as ‘Wilders argues for Nexit’,
‘Greenpeace campaigns against TTIP’ or ‘Greeks reject the bailout package in the 2015
referendum’. Claimants can be individual or collective actors; this includes EU institu-
tions and their representatives, member state governments, experts, journalists, civil soci-
ety actors and representatives from all kinds of political parties, in government or oppo-
sition, but also ordinary citizens. Drawing on Statham (2005, p. 12), a claim is defined
as a unit of strategic or communicative action in the public sphere ‘which articulate[s] po-
litical demands, decisions, implementations, calls to action, proposals, criticisms, or phys-
ical attacks, which, actually or potentially, affect the interests or integrity of the claimants
and/or other collective actors in a policy field’ (p. 12). Claims include evaluations of cur-
rent policy and/or demands for future policy, sometimes justified through framing the de-
mand as a step towards the realisation of a particular value. The claimant expresses a
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Peace, prosperity and protection 1201

desire in a particular political direction in relation to a political issue: for or against more
redistribution in the EMU, for or against open borders for trade or for or against more dis-
cretion for the executive to counterterrorism. This demand thus consists of an issue and a
position on that issue and is a necessary component of a claim. There is no political claim
if there is no demand.
Demands are operationalised to load onto one of three dimensions of political conflict:
integration vs demarcation, more or less government expenditure and more or less exec-
utive discretion. ‘Integration’ is coded if the realisation of the policy demand would imply
a pooling of sovereignty or defended a locus of power at the supranational level (Kriesi et
al. 2008, p. 891). ‘Demarcation’, on the other hand, applies to any claim where the real-
isation would imply a weakening of supranational institutions or processes or a reaffirma-
tion of borders. If the implications of the policy demands defied the integration–demarca-
tion divide, it is captured through other demands. This applied, for example, to
preferences for greater or weaker executive discretion vis-à-vis controlling powers, partic-
ular legislative and judicial ones.
Sometimes, the claimant provides a reason to support his or her demand, often in the
form of an ultimate aim or value that the claim would serve. This reason is either an im-
plicit or explicit justification of the claim, communicating a common good or value as the
ultimate aim (organising idea) to be pursued through the realisation of the policy demand.
These reasons or justifications are here analysed as operationalised frames. Framing is
here understood as organising ‘an apparently diverse array of symbols, images and argu-
ments, linking them through an underlying organizing idea that suggests what is at stake
on the issue’ (Gamson 2004, p. 245). Three variables capture the reproduction of different
narratives of European integration through framing. The first captures key frames that are
enshrined in the European Treaties as the EU’s core values, particularly in Article 2 of the
Treaty on European Union (TEU), which states:
The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy,
equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons be-
longing to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in
which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between
women and men prevail.
These include the universalist value frames that Helbling (2014) found to be most
prevalent in debates about immigration. Instrumental ‘pragmatic arguments’
(Sjursen 2002) are captured by the second variable on ‘other frames’. Whilst previous
studies have tended to construct a single framing variable, implying the coding (and ex-
istence) of either pragmatic, ethical-political or universal-moral values in the public
sphere, they are here separated to enable isolation of the explicit instrumentalisation of
Article 2 TEU values by both EU actors and other actors in debating EU politics and
the possibility that moral or ethical framing co-occurs with pragmatic framing in
claims-making. Finally, the third variable captures the presence of the protection narra-
tive. Whilst the protection narrative clearly resonates with the pragmatic value of security,
as does the peace narrative, this allows us to analyse the explicit usage of the word ‘pro-
tection’ or ‘to protect’ in the public sphere.
The article proceeds with a descriptive overview of the various frames in the public
sphere in general, as well as by issue and country. It continues with a more in-depth

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1202 Pieter de Wilde

analysis of the six most frequently used frames: democracy and rule of law, solidarity,
economic prosperity, efficiency/effectiveness, security and protection. The use of these
frames is regressed on the level, nationality and party of the claimant, as well as the issue
and position of the claim, using logistic regression (see Appendix S1 for further details).

3. Six Prominent Narratives in Europe’s Public Spheres

Descriptive statistics revealed that just over 78 per cent of claims do not have an Article 2
TEU frame. In other words, only in about 22 per cent of the cases do individuals and col-
lective actors frame their political opinions and demands with one of the key moral or
ethical-political values included in the TEU as key European values. Compare this to
pragmatic framing, such as invocation of the values of economic prosperity and security,
which are present in 58.5 per cent of claims. Furthermore, the explicit protection narrative
of ‘l’Europe qui protège’ is used to frame only 4 per cent of claims. Also, it is worth not-
ing that 30.6 per cent of all claims did not contain any framing. In other words, following
our logic of analysing narratives through framing in claims, three out of ten claims do not
contribute to the reproduction of narratives in Europe’s public spheres.
Based on the initial overview shown in Table 1, I proceed to analyse the occurrence of
the most theoretically relevant and most frequently used frames in depth. This includes
the underlined variables in Table 1 – democracy and rule of law, solidarity, economic
prosperity, effectiveness/efficiency, security and protection – recoded as dichotomous
variables like the protection variable, where 1 = present and 0 = absent. I start with a basic
descriptive comparison by national public sphere from the six countries included in the
analysis. This is then repeated for migration, EMU, trade and counterterrorism as well
as the overarching constitutional issue of European integration.

Framing by Public Sphere and Issue Debates

Table 2 shows the percentages of claims in which frequently occurring frames are used in
each of the six countries. A chi-square test for country differences reveals significant dif-
ferences across countries. There is quite some variation in how skewed the occurrence of

Table 1: Framing in Claims in the Public Sphere

Article 2 TEU Values Freq. Percent Other Values Freq. Per Protection Freq. Per
cent cent

None 4213 78.25 None 2235 41.51 Absent 5162 95.88

Freedom 64 1.19 Culture 184 3.42 Present 222 4.12
Democracy & Rule of 555 10.31 Sovereignty 133 2.47
Law
Equality 81 1.50 Economy 976 18.13
Human Dignity 67 1.24 Effectiveness 558 10.36
Justice 73 1.36 Security 634 11.78
Solidarity 219 4.07 Sustainability 64 1.19
Tolerance 30 0.56 Other 600 11.14
Human Rights 82 1.52
Total 5384 100 Total 5384 100 Total 5384 100

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Peace, prosperity and protection 1203
Table 2: Framing of Claims by National Public Sphere, Percentages
Democracy & Solidarity Economic Effectiveness/ Security/ Protection
Rule of Law Prosperity Efficiency Peace Narrative

Country
Germany 15.59 2.91 15.06 12.60 8.35 .97
France 6.83 3.55 17.29 5.14 14.36 11.35
Italy 2.48 4.04 29.35 11.96 7.61 1.09
Spain 12.84 5.56 21.36 13.21 10.25 3.58
Denmark 10.42 5.28 15.00 4.44 14.44 .14
Poland 9.99 4.18 14.71 15.52 16.73 5.94
Total 10.31 4.07 18.13 10.36 11.78 4.12
χ2 103.52*** 12.73** 79.92*** 97.53*** 57.45*** 233.36***
**
p < 0.05. ***p < 0.01.

particular frames is. Solidarity is invoked by claimants roughly equally in all countries
under study; between 2.91 per cent of claims in Germany and 5.56 per cent of claims
in Spain are justified with concerns for solidarity. In contrast, the protection narrative does
not travel far beyond France, where it has its origin in President Macron’s speech. Whilst
11.35 per cent of claims in French newspapers linked up to the protection narrative, the
numbers in the other five countries are much lower; the protection narrative is next to
non-existent in Germany, Italy and Denmark. Table 2 also shows the predominance of
the economic prosperity frame throughout the EU. It is the most frequently used frame
in five out of the six countries studied, Poland being the exception. It is by far the most
prominent frame in Italy and Spain, two countries particularly hard hit by the Euro crisis.
The difference in exposure to frames by issue debate is much stronger than the differ-
ence across countries, as shown in Table 3. In particular, economic prosperity and security
– two of the most frequently used frames – are highly issue sensitive. This illustrates that
different political questions often have their own narratives. Whilst there is a dispropor-
tionate usage of economic prosperity framing in debates on the EMU and – to a lesser ex-
tent – trade, the security frame is heavily concentrated in debates on counterterrorism.
This is not very surprising, as it is easy to see how the Euro crisis, as well as the

Table 3: Framing of Claims by Issue Debate, Percentages

Democracy & Solidarity Economic Effectiveness/ Security/ Protection
Rule of Law Prosperity Efficiency Peace Narrative

Issue
EMU 7.46 4.98 42.29 9.74 0.78 1.07
Counter- 10.82 2.00 1.68 11.03 42.86 6.72
terrorism
Migration 11.37 5.97 5.04 14.82 9.93 2.45
Trade 8.58 1.85 21.72 3.80 3.58 8.14
European 15.41 4.20 13.31 10.50 6.16 4.76
Integration
Total 10.31 4.07 18.13 10.36 11.78 4.12
χ2 37.33*** 38.03*** 906.61*** 73.49*** 1100*** 97.81***
**
p < 0.05. ***p < 0.01.

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1204 Pieter de Wilde

EU-USA Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the EU-Canada
Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) negotiations, triggered con-
cerns for economic prosperity, whilst terrorist attacks and the debate on preventing future
terrorist attacks triggered concerns for security.
The analysis also shows that core European values, as enshrined in Article 2 TEU, are
the most evenly used frames across public spheres and issue audiences. Solidarity, in par-
ticular, is used as frame across countries and issues with comparatively little variation.

Logistic Regression of Key Frames

A series of logistic regressions for each of the six highlighted frames – democracy and
rule of law, solidarity, economic prosperity, effectiveness/efficiency, security/peace and
protection – reveals patterns in who tends to employ them, and for what. Coefficient plots
are shown in Figure 1, with full results and detailed discussion reported in Appendix S1.
The democracy and rule of law frame is often presented by judicial actors. This is un-
surprising, given the prominence of rule of law issues in several newer member states and
the professional concern judges, courts and lawyers have with these issues. It is also
disproportionally used by far-left actors and Germans whilst being much less likely to
come from French or Italian actors. Democracy and rule of law is a frame that is clearly
more often used to justify demands on European integration and its associated constitu-
tional issues than it is in any of the other four policy issues studied here. When invoked,

Figure 1: Logistic Regression Coefficient Plot.

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Peace, prosperity and protection 1205

democracy and rule of law as a frame tends to be used to argue against executive discre-
tion. Arguments in favour of more pooling of sovereignty or open borders are less likely
to be justified by a concern for democracy and rule of law. With a pseudo R2 of 0.090, this
model has low-level explanatory power, indicating that even when the maker of the claim
is known, as well as what the issue and the demand are, there is still just a weak basis to
predict the use of democracy and rule of law as a frame.
The frame of solidarity is slightly more likely to be used by experts and Danish actors
and less likely to be used by liberals. Arguments in favour of integration and increased
spending are more frequently supported with concerns for solidarity, whilst it is a compar-
atively rare frame in debates on trade. That said, linking up to the discussion in the section
above, the explained variance of model 3 is low. This means that solidarity is used as
frame for different policy agendas by different actors across member states and issues.
Whether or not claims are justified by concerns for economic prosperity is something
the actor and argument-based model predicts best. British, Danish and Italian actors are
more likely to raise concerns about economic prosperity, whilst Greek actors are less
likely to do so. This is in line with findings by Diez Medrano and Gray (2010). It may
at first seem surprising to see comparatively low attention to prosperity amongst Greek
actors, given how strongly the Euro crisis affected that country, but this does correspond
with previous research finding that much of the bailout referendum campaign in Greece
was debated in terms of sovereignty rather than in terms of the economic consequences
of bailout vs default (Michailidou 2017). Whether demands are framed in terms of eco-
nomic prosperity is heavily influenced by the issue at hand and features prominently in
debates on the EMU and trade and much less so in debates on migration and counterter-
rorism. It is clearly associated with the integration–demarcation conflict, as integration is
argued to be good for the economy, whilst those arguing for demarcation shy away from
the prosperity frame. Concerns about too much executive discretion are rarely justified
with economic prosperity, whilst both claims for and against spending are often supported
by arguments that it would be good for the economy.
Effectiveness/efficiency is the frame that escapes the explanatory model the most. Nei-
ther the nature of the actor nor the nature of the argument tells us much about whether
claims are justified with a concern for effective or efficient governance. In other words,
all kinds of actors frame their demands as pursuing effective and efficient government,
no matter what they want. Societal actors, in general, are less likely than others to justify
claims as furthering efficiency and effectiveness, although media actors and experts – two
key societal actors – stand out as relatively frequent contributors to this frame. Executive
and legislative actors employ this frame comparatively rarely. This is interesting, given
the strong attention some key arguments using this frame – Margaret Thatcher’s argument
that There Is No Alternative (TINA) and Angela Merkel’s argument that saving the
Eurozone through bailouts was ‘alternativlos’ – have received in the media and in schol-
arly literature on European integration (e.g. Liebert 2016; Zürn 2016). Perhaps, given the
storm of critique such arguments may face when made by government leaders, many ex-
ecutive actors shy away from explicitly stating they see certain policies as unavoidable.
Compared to other nationalities, Danish, French and Polish actors are more likely to
raise security concerns. This frame features prominently in debates on counterterrorism,
but rarely in EMU debates. This clearly aligns with the line of conflict between degrees
of executive discretion, as arguments in favour of more executive discretion are often
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1206 Pieter de Wilde

justified with security concerns, whilst arguments against it rarely do so. To a lesser ex-
tent, it also resonates with conflicts over spending, as it used in arguments for higher gov-
ernment spending. Of the six narratives and their respective frames studied more closely
here, this is the one whose usage is best explained by our model, as indicated through a
comparatively high pseudo R2 (0.300).
Finally, the multivariate logistic regression confirms that the protection narrative is
mostly a French habit, although Polish actors also use it more often than others. Danish
actors, on the other hand, do not often employ this frame. Politically, it is associated with
the far right. The protection narrative is relatively prominent in debates on trade and less
so in debates on the EMU and migration. It is used comparatively often to support de-
mands for more executive discretion.

Conclusion
The European Commission’s search for a new narrative remains a formidable challenge.
The Commission may be eager to support the integration process with a unifying story,
but Europe’s public spheres feature a cacophony of voices in which various policy de-
mands are being framed in all kinds of ways. Where the Ukraine war briefly seemed to
provide impetus for a new narrative on strategic autonomy, this impetus appears to have
dissipated within weeks. Framing patterns change quickly and are highly context depen-
dent. Agile political actors manoeuvre to gain the political upper hand and will use what-
ever frame resonates more at the time and place at hand. In that sense, the mapping of
framing patterns in the public sphere conducted here shares some commonalities with
the ‘narrative ju-jitsu’ described by McMahon and Kaiser (2021). However, ju-jitsu is a
rules-based competition with two players. In Europe’s public spheres, there are far more
than two players, and they do not play by the rules. Debates about European politics do
not just evolve around the question of integration vs demarcation; there are debates about
the degrees of discretion executive actors should enjoy and about whether money should
be spent to tackle policy problems, as well as demands that do not load onto any of these
three dimensions. It would therefore be more accurate to speak of a ‘justification jungle’
rather than narrative ju-jitsu, where many different political actors – including EU insti-
tutions, national politicians and societal actors – try to gain a discursive upper hand by
justifying their policy demands using many different frames. They do this through an ap-
peal to various values, linking their policy agenda to a particular value and portraying
their policy demand as the realisation of that value. These values include the
moral-universal values listed in Article 2 TEU and many more. The fact that few frames
are ‘owned’ by any particular actor or agenda is shown through attempts to explain the
occurrence of a particular frame in public discourse based on the key characteristics of
the claimant and the nature of the political demand. The comprehensive regression anal-
yses presented in this article only account for limited explained variance.
In contrast to previous findings in the literature on framing Europe, the most pro-
nounced differences in terms of how European politics is framed are not found to be along
national or partisan lines. Rather, the issue at hand has the most significant impact on
which frames tend to be used. The fact that the EU, as a political system, now regulates
or touches upon a vast range of different policy fields with widely different trade-offs
and questions of distribution and redistribution thus provides a formidable challenge to
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Peace, prosperity and protection 1207

the creation of a unifying narrative of European integration. It shows the limits in terms of
unifying power, particularly for ethical and pragmatic values that are not contained in Ar-
ticle 2 TEU. Take the narrative of ‘green Europe’ as an example. Whilst this is a promi-
nent narrative in the literature and the European Commission recently made a strenuous
effort to present itself as a champion of sustainability through the European Green Deal,
sustainability as a frame rarely occurred in the public debates analysed in this particular
study on migration, the EMU, counterterrorism and trade in the period of 2012–2019.
In debates on climate change, this picture almost certainly would have looked radically
different.
As with any study, the present one has certain limitations. Care has been taken to in-
clude a great variety of political issues about which to sample newspaper articles and to
do that from many different EU member states over a prolonged period of time. Neverthe-
less, it cannot aspire to be fully representative of Europe’s public spheres. Times change,
and data from the present Ukraine war period are not included. Given the large variety of
EU member states, it may well be that different patterns would have been uncovered had
even more member states been included in the sample. The relative focus on large- and
medium-sized member states in the sample might underestimate unique framing patterns
of EU politics in small and tiny member states. Finally, this study relies on newspaper ma-
terial as the sole source of political debate. Whilst there is solid empirical evidence that
other media sources, such as social media, tend to replicate and resonate stories in news-
papers (De Wilde et al. 2013; Cinalli et al. 2021), there might still have been different
findings had such sources been included. The question of which policy agendas are
framed in which ways in Europe’s public spheres thus remains an open one, and the pres-
ent study can but hope to be one piece of the larger puzzle.
That being said, the partial and short-lived unifying resonance of the strategic auton-
omy narrative following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seems to support rather than to
challenge the findings presented here. Whilst EU actors were quick to seize the opportu-
nity provided by this new crisis to argue for closer European cooperation on defence and
energy, these arguments resonated to different degrees in different member states; other
actors were quick to join the fray and use the exact same frames to argue for very different
policy agendas. Most importantly, other concerns than security from Russian aggression
quickly entered the debate, notably economic concerns about rising inflation due to high
energy prices. This is in line with the ‘justification jungle’ argument presented here.
Frames are a notoriously difficult concept to code in quantitative content analysis projects
such as this one. They appear in all kinds of different forms, more or less explicitly, and
are often dependent on context for correct interpretation. As a result, intercoder reliability
scores are generally low, which should lead to caution in interpretation. The data pre-
sented here meet the standard requirement of at least 0.70 percentage agreement (Lom-
bard et al. 2002, p. 593), but I advise against over interpretation of small differences or
informing policy decisions by this study, unless supported by additional research.
If there are any policy implications of this analysis, it is primarily that any single nar-
rative for European integration is unlikely to be successful in generating a prolonged com-
mon sense of purpose within the EU. If the European Commission or other pro-European
actors are serious about surviving the justification jungle, they would do well to remain
discursively agile and be willing to use any and all frames to justify their arguments at
any given issue debate, depending on the national audience that is listening. When talking
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1208 Pieter de Wilde

to a French or Polish audience in the context of counterterrorism debates, it makes sense

to argue that the EU exists to protect its citizens. When talking to an Italian or Spanish
audience in the context of the EMU, however, it makes more sense to argue the EU is
all about promoting economic prosperity.
This type of nimble strategy may, however, be too difficult to maintain. Spokespersons
would have to react quickly to different situations without time to obtain consent from su-
periors and may well forget which argument to make where. This could lead to
embarrassing and potentially disastrous mix-ups. The European Commission might want
to opt for a more defensive strategy. If there is any single frame that lends itself as a nar-
rative of European integration, the present article points to solidarity as the strongest can-
didate. Solidarity is a frame that resonates across Europe, as indicated in the compara-
tively even spread of its occurrence throughout nation- and issue-based audiences. It is
not clearly owned by any actor, but – if anything – associated with pro-integrationist ar-
guments. That is a foundation pro-European actors, including the European Commission,
could build upon if they wish to do so. The caveat is, of course, that once they start such a
campaign to discursively weaponise solidarity as the backbone value of European integra-
tion, opponents of European integration will search for opportunities to ‘use their
strengths against them’ and argue how the EU is ruining solidarity in Europe. If the nar-
rative is not firmly grounded in a policy that systematically and consistently furthers sol-
idarity, these will be easy pickings.

Acknowledgements
This research was carried out as part of the RECONNECT project, which has received funding from the
European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no.
770142. The online appendix for this article can be accessed on the Wiley website. Data and codebook
are freely available at the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD) in adherence to FAIR principles,
doi: 10.18712/NSD-NSD3047-V3. Data collection was organised by Anna Gora. Earlier versions were
presented at the University of Basel, Luzern and Geneva, an online RECONNECT workshop and at the
17th biannual European Union Studies Association (EUSA) in Miami. I would like to thank Anna Gora,
Paul Blokker, Alexander Trechsel, Nenad Stojanovic and Silvana Târlea for their contribution, feedback
and provided opportunities. This article reflects only the author’s view. The European Commission Re-
search Executive Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

Correspondence:
Pieter de Wilde, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway.
email: [email protected]

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Supporting Information
Additional supporting information may be found online in the Supporting Information
section at the end of the article.

Supporting info item

Appendix S1: Peace, Prosperity and Protection: The ‘justification jungle’ of Europe’s
public spheres.

© 2022 The Authors. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies published by University Association for Contemporary European Studies and John Wiley & Sons
Ltd.