Why do some member states publicly discuss a common European policy and others do not or discuss it differently? Can we see signs for a European public sphere in the mass media despite these national filter processes � despite the plurality within the European Union?

A European public sphere does not require a unification of national mass media debates, but the development of an interconnected communicative space throughout Europe. Whether debates are interconnected and if so, how these interconnections look like, depends on national actors and contexts. To understand processes of national agenda-setting and interpretation regarding EU policies and their impact on the development of a European public sphere, Silke Adam analyzes the German and French debates on EU enlargement and a common Constitution. For that purpose public debates are conceptualized as symbolic networks that can be analyzed with the tools of empirical network analysis.