Presenting politics in public is inter alia about claiming responsibility for successes and blaming others for failures. All actors but even more so elected actors have an interest to present themselves favorably in public which results in systematic interests for attributing responsibility. The European multi-level polity with its interwoven decision actors and multiple layers of decision taking offers multiple opportunities in constructing responsibility. The article presents results from a systematic content analysis, comparing newspaper articles on routine EU politics from Germany and the UK, on the public attribution of responsibility. Not only can we expect positive self attributions and negative attributions to others in general but we also expect the EU institutions to be the most prominent targets of negative attributions. Representatives from EU institutions are not well represented in public reporting and have a limited interest in rejecting negative attributions as they are not directly elected. Therefore they are a perfect scapegoat for national governments. The same applies to foreign national governments. These expectations are substantiated by our findings. However, as attributions could be different we also expect counter framing. Especially journalists could take the role of questioning attributions and presenting alternative interpretations. This happens rarely. In only 10.8 per cent of the articles which include at least one attribution of responsibility there is an opposing interpretation provided. In only 2.4 per cent of all articles the journalists themselves offer these alternative interpretations. In single articles there seems to be no balancing by journalists, neither in commenting directly on the provided attribution nor in presenting contrary positions.
