Who do EU politicians speak for? Shape-shifting representation by EU political leaders

European integration destabilises constituency boundaries. As a consequence, political leaders in the EU address multiple constituencies, including ones with whom they are not directly accountable to electorally. This paper builds on Michael Saward’s (2014) notion of ‘shape-shifting representation’ to develop an inventory of the different kinds of constituencies that EU politicians can appeal to (national representation, party-based representation, descriptive representation, substantive representation, and holistic representation) and hypotheses about the conditions under which they are likely to do so. It then reviews these hypotheses by analysing the press conferences of EU leaders after EU summits, looking in particular at differences in the representative claims between the president of the European Council and the holder of the Council presidency and at differences between the heads of government of bigger and smaller member states.