When the financial crisis originating in the US turned into a sovereign debt crisis in Europe at the end of 2009, negotiations about solutions for rescuing Greece proved difficult. The necessity of agreeing on several aspects of EMU reform forced leaders into mutual concessions agreed in numerous rounds of negotiations with other EU leaders. As a result, they had to craft discourses for explaining legitimising their positions towards their national constituencies, and in particular, the sometimes sensible - change of these positions. The reform of the EMU, widely seen as the major achievement of EU integration, brought up the question of the future institutional model for the EU as a whole. As leaders addressed the markets’ fears of a Eurozone dissolution, talks led to the strengthening of the federal dimension of monetary integration (enhanced powers for the European Central Bank, conditional financial solidarity and the constitutionalisation of fiscal austerity, etc). This paper assumes that in the “post-functional” era of EU integration (Marks and Hooghe), citizens’ assent is inescapable. In order to understand and assess the potential for future integration, it is therefore crucial to understand how leaders have respectively interpreted the solutions adopted in the face of the crisis. This paper focuses on France and Germany for the simple reason that, although this view was contested a few years ago, the crisis has shown that Franco-German agreement remains key to proceed to further integration on the continent. The aim is to assess if French and German heads of State have framed the response to the crisis as a major step towards a more federal Europe. Empirically, a frame analysis is conducted by examining all press conferences held by A. Merkel and the two successive French Presidents since 2010.
