IntroductionDuring the last decade, almost all countries within the EU have experienced the emergence of Eurosceptic parties. These parties have won 113 out of 751 seats in the 2014 European Parliament elections. Their unprecedented success was fuelled by the ongoing crisis of the EU regarding bailout, the threat of a Eurozone breakdown, growing state debts, the instability of the banking system and disputed austerity measures. Thus, Eurosceptic parties have become a challenge for those parties that have integrated Europe for decades.This article seeks to describe how pro-European parties strategically communicate when facing this Eurosceptic challenge and how this affects the politicization of EU integration in each of the examined countries. Our description of pro-European parties' strategic behaviour grants special attention to pro-European catch-all parties, especially to those struggling with internal dissent regarding EU integration, as it is these large, vote-winning parties that strongly shape societal debates.Our study contributes to research in a three-fold manner. First, we focus on the strategic interactions of parties (for this research desiderate, e.g. Kriesi, 2008) by analysing how pro-EU parties communicate when facing a Eurosceptic challenge. In this analysis we depart from research focusing predominantly on Eurosceptics. Instead, Eurosceptic parties in our study serve as a comparative baseline to identify the strategies of pro-EU parties. Second, drawing on Meguid (2005) and Bale et al. (2010), we further elaborate on the strategic repertoire that parties have at hand. Third, we link strategic party behaviour to EU politicization in a country.We thereby show that parties' communication strategies regarding topics, issues and positions source: https://doi.org/10.7892/boris.98770 | downloaded: 2.8.2020 directly affect the core components of politicization. Politicization within a country occurs if (a) salience is attached to the topic of EU integration; (b) parties enter a common debate about the same aspects of EU integration and (c) polarized opinions are voiced.Our focus on party elites' strategic behaviour and the resulting elite politicization towards EU integration seems justified as research has shown that it is elites who (partially) shape public opinions about EU integration (Gabel and Scheve, 2007), who impact the extent to which voters rely on EU considerations in European Parliament elections (Hobolt and Spoon, 2012) and who strongly influence mass media coverage about the integration project (Adam, 2007).To answer our research question on the communication of pro-European parties when facing a Eurosceptic challenge, we first describe the strategic repertoire that pro-European parties have at hand and develop hypotheses on how this repertoire is used by pro-European parties in general and by pro-European catch-all parties facing strong internal dissent. Second, we illustrate how party strategies can be analysed by means of quantitative content analysis of press releases in the run-u...

We analyse whether a newspaper's editorial position regarding the European Union is related to its selection decisions in the news section. We ask whether such a synchronization between news and editorials exists, whether it is conditioned by the type of media system and under which conditions it also affects the selection of transnational voices. Our study is based on a quantitative content analysis of the quality press in seven European countries (Austria,