International Journal of Press-Politics
Who Takes the Lead? Reciprocal Relationships Between the European Parliament’s Political Agenda and National Media Agenda on EU–China Trade Relations in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom (2001–2020)
2025-09-28
China is a major trading partner of the European Union (EU), and the debate over China’s economic influence has gained prominence on both the political and media agendas in EU countries. Through time-series analysis, this study investigates reciprocal relationships between the European Parliament’s (EP) political agenda and the national media agenda regarding EU–China trade relations (2001–2020). The analysis is based on a sample of 538 speeches from the EP Plenary Debates and a total of 867 newspaper articles from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom (UK). Combined with a manual quantitative content analysis, this study also examines the salience of sub-issues in EU–China trade relations. Monthly-level vector autoregressive analyses yielded four major findings. First, a positive reciprocal relationship was observed between the EP’s political agenda and the national media agenda on EU–China trade relations, with mutual influences showing similar effect sizes. Second, it was especially the speeches by Far-Right Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from the Netherlands and the UK that elicited more national media attention, and vice versa. Third, we found positive mutual influences not only between the national media agenda and the political agenda set by MEPs but also between the national media agenda and the political agenda set by EU representatives. Fourth, the geographical and social proximity of sub-issues in EU–China trade relations appears to moderate the politics-media dynamics. The findings contribute to existing scholarship by examining the function of multilevel structures (i.e., supranational vs. national) in agenda-setting research.