The euro crisis has prompted unprecedented levels of attention for European affairs in national public spheres. However, not every interest is represented equally in public. This becomes most apparent in elite business papers, whose readership represents segments of the economic and political elites that are crucial for the functioning of EMU. By analyzing the euro crisis coverage in these newspapers (January 2010–March 2011), the paper asks which factors determine who has a voice. In the literature, actors’ preferences are usually assumed to be decisive for their propensity to politicize the EU. The paper, however, shows that institutional constraints are the most important explanatory factor for actors’ visibility. Resulting from the effect of institutional constraints, the debate during the crisis suffers from a strong bias towards executive actors and powerful economic interests, leaving the losers from EMU without representation in this crucial forum for intellectual politicization and policy-debate.
