Credit Claiming in the European Union Tom Hunter, University of

To what extent, and under what conditions, do governments in Europe’s multilevel sys- tem claim credit for the work of the EU, and shift blame onto the EU to avoid responsibility themselves? In this article, I argue that variations in electoral incentives determine govern- ments’ presentation of the EU in their domestic public spheres. [...] Figure 1 showcases the increase in public and partisan Euroscepticism during a period of successive crises, plotting both the percentages of those attributing a negative image to the EU in the biannual Eurobarometer surveys, as well as the seat share of Eurosceptic parties in parliament3. [...] The diversity of the competencies delegated to the EU, combined with the salience of the issues discussed therefore provides the preconditions for governments to tailor their presentation according to citizens’ priorities, not simply according to their views on European integration. [...] The measure of public Euroscepticism is the survey-weighted mean of all valid responses by country, and gives us the proportion of respondents with a negative image of the EU. [...] It also shows that despite the increase in Euroscepticism during the investigation period statements that explicitly blame or criticize the EU are rare, the only exception coming from a handful of critical statements by Chirac in 2005, Cameron in 2014 and Tsipras in 2018.12 Figure 3 plots the balance of credit sharing and credit claiming in governments’ rhetoric 12Out of 6,012 statements, only 41.