Challenging Domestic Politics? European Debates of National Parliaments in France, Germany and the UK

The thesis of a ‘politicisation’ of European integration has been influential both for research about the EU and comparative research on political parties. However, the debate triggered by this thesis remains elusive, inter alia, with regard to the thematic structure and the interaction modes of parties within controversies about EU multi-level governance. Against this background, the present article maps the thematic and party political dimension of controversies and asks for linkages between both dimensions in 31 parliamentary debates about the EU in France, Germany and the UK between 2005 and 2009. The empirical evidence from these debates suggests that a categorisation of different thematic aspects of debates can be used to map and explain the emergence of several types of polarisation between political parties, thus elucidating different variants of ‘politicisation’ of European affairs and working towards their systematic explanation.