“…Considering the political space in which parties, citizens and interest groups can be situated, a left–right continuum is an evident starting point. Hence, whereas divides across the European integration continuum have been gaining in prominence for high politics issues such as the Euro crisis and budgetary policies (Blumenau and Lauderdale, 2018), it is widely agreed that everyday policies in the European Parliament are largely driven by left–right controversies rather than national or territorial ones (Hix and Noury, 2009; McElroy and Benoit, 2007; but see Proksch and Slapin, 2010). Moreover, for their part, citizens are often not informed or even aware of EU policies and rely on the left–right continuum as a heuristic to position themselves on specific EU policy issues (Vasilopoulou and Gattermann, 2013, p. 609).…”