1 Panel: Democratisation and Parliamentarisation Paper: Do European Parliament Election Campaigns further EU Democracy? Monika Mokre/ Emmanuel Sigalas Abstract As the only directly elected EU institution, the European Parliament represents European citizens at the EU level. However, representative democracy requires public spheres enabling meaningful voting decisions of the citizens by bringing up and discussing relevant issues. According to the literature, EP election campaigns do not further such European public spheres as they focus on national issues thereby contributing to an understanding of EP- elections as second order national elections. In our research on the 2009 EP election campaigns we took a closer empirical view on this assumption by looking for signs of supranationalisation of the European electoral campaigns where the European parties influence the national over the content of the campaign in the different EU member states. Our research looks for similarities in the political party and MEP candidate claims across the vertical (between national and European) and the horizontal (between member states) level and asks to what extent these similarities are the result of top-down coordination or simply random responses to common challenges. Our study draws on a wide array of original data: (a) political positions from the manifestoes of the main European party federations (EPP, PES, Greens) and of the conservative, socialist/social-democrat and green parties in five EU member states (Austria, France, Germany, Greece, and UK); (b) party and MEP candidate positions in the national press; (c) interviews with European party officials. The paper will discuss these empirical results with regard to their impact, or lack thereof, on democracy and democratisation at the EU level. 1. Introduction In the famous Lincoln formula, democracy is government of the people, for the people, and by the people. While this is certainly a simplified and also extremely vague way of defining democracy, contemporary modes of democratic governance are still measured against this ideal.