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Domestic opportunity structures and political actors' positions are widely regarded as the most important explanatory factors for EU politicisation. The euro crisis, however, has revealed cleavages across rather than within countries, suggesting structural factors as a potential explanation for politicisation. Based on the political economy literature on Europe's Economic and Monetary Union, this contribution develops a structural approach to politicisation with respect to countries' power and variety of capitalism. Using a content and claims analysis of business papers in Germany, France, Austria and Ireland before and during the crisis, the findings reveal a differentiated pattern of politicisation. While an expansion of actors indicates that EMU became more politicised during the crisis, polarisation remained low within countries. Countries' variety of capitalism and their perceived power in the EU largely explain the substance and objects of politicisation. The findings encourage further research considering structural explanations for differentiated politicisation in less elite-centred settings of politicisation.

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The widespread view that the refugee crisis has sparked unprecedented levels of European Union politicisation has rarely been backed by systematic empirical evidence. We investigate this claim using a novel dataset of several thousand user comments posted below articles of German regional media outlets on Facebook. Despite considerable European Union authority in the policy area, extensive media coverage of the crisis and the rise of a populist party in Germany, our results suggest that the politicisation of Europe remains low among social media users, especially when compared to national and subnational levels of governance. When talking about Europe, users hardly refer to European Union institutions or policies. Instead, other member states and notions of the geographic or cultural space dominate the debate.

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