Central to the study is the relevance of media actors as actors in civil society for the European integration process. This relevance is empirically assessed, making use of a selection of print media from Germany and the Netherlands, analysing the path-dependency of journalistic coverage and reporting along two questions: Is the focus on and evaluation of the “European Project” and its different aspects in Germany and the Netherlands alike, or does it differ? How do traditional political and societal perspectives affect opinion formation in the media? A large corpus of newspaper content has been assessed. The Constitutional Treaty and the Reform Treaty serve as a starting- and endpoint for analysis.