Less researched than the second-order character of elections to the European Parliament (EP) is the ‘Europeanness’ of European elections and its implications for voter participation in these elections. This article aims to fill this gap by studying the Europeanness of the public debate in the run-up to the 2019 EP elections and the mobilizing power of European issues in these electoral contests. In doing this, we draw on a new data set covering intriguing aspects of the 2019 EP elections. The findings of the empirical analysis of media and survey data indicate that the elections to the EP were more European contests than ever before in the history of these elections – yet this is not true in the same way for all of the countries under consideration. Moreover, the Europeanness of electorates, measured as genuine orientations towards EU politics, matters for electoral participation and thus has the power to mobilize citizens. Nonetheless, national factors still play an important role in these elections. These findings are insightful for the future assessment of EP elections and the scholarly debate over multi-level electoral politics in Europe.

对欧洲选举的“欧洲性”及其对选民参与这些选举的影响比对欧洲议会选举的二等特征的研究较少。本文旨在通过研究2019年EP选举前公众辩论的欧洲性以及这些选举竞赛中欧洲问题的动员力量来填补这一空白。为此，我们利用了一个涵盖2019年EP选举有趣方面的新数据集。对媒体和调查数据进行实证分析的结果表明，欧洲议会的选举比这些选举的历史上要多，比以往任何时候都要多参加欧洲竞赛，但是对于所有正在考虑的国家而言，情况并非如此。此外，选民的欧洲性被衡量为对欧盟政治的真正取向，对于选举参与至关重要，因此具有动员公民的权力。尽管如此，民族因素仍然在这些选举中发挥着重要作用。这些发现对于欧洲议会选举的未来评估和欧洲多层次选举政治的学术辩论具有深刻见解。