European Elections and Spitzenkandidatens’ Campaigns

The EU, faced with a crisis of legitimacy and the need to counteract a decline in voter turnout, decided to introduce the figure of the Spitzenkandidat - the leading candidate of the European party - in 2014, in accordance with the Treaties. The stated aim is to increase interest in the European elections and, consequently, voter turnout, by personalising and developing European campaigns around the politician elected as President of the European Commission. After a promising start in 2014 and the election of Junker to head the Commission, the next round revealed the weakness of the mechanism designed to guarantee the election of the Spitzenkandidat of the European party with the most votes. What will happen in 2024? Can the Spitzenkandidaten still be seen as a means of strengthening the EU? What is their role in the latest European campaign? The research aims to capture the specificity of the campaigns of the 10 Spitzenkandidaten by monitoring social media and websites. The research is exploratory in nature and uses content analysis of the posts published on the main social profiles (X, facebook, instagram) in the period between 6 May and 6 June 2024. Our approach allows us to observe the models of political communication from the perspective of both the styles of communication, the themes and, finally, the visual dimension of the campaigns. In particular, the analysis allows us to analyse the representation of Europe that emerges from the politicians' speeches and that seems to be strongly divided with regard to the concept of borders, the theme of identities, values and inclusion. The candidates' agendas highlight the centrality of certain issues such as immigration, energy policy and climate change. Unlike in the past, politics as an area of confrontation between political orientations and ideologies in the traditional sense remains marginal, marking a discontinuity with more recent European elections.