Katjana Gattermann

ABSTRACT Under the Schengen Agreement, member states agreed to abolish internal border controls to ensure free movement. While the reintroduction of internal border controls is foreseen only in exceptional circumstances, states increasingly invoke their right to unilaterally reintroduce border controls. This is at odds with a core principle of the EU: free movement. In this paper, we examine different strategies that public officials use to justify the introduction and removal of border controls.

EU officials and leaders have consistently raised concerns about the threat of non-democratic influences and disinformation campaigns undermining the 2024 European Parliament (EP) elections (e.g., O’Carroll, Citation2024). In this context, disinformation involves the deliberate creation or distortion of election information with the intention to deceive (see Egelhofer & Lecheler, Citation2019; Wardle, Citation2017).

Introduction A close matching of representatives' and voters' opinions is an important feature of democratic representation. High levels of congruence would suggest that citizens' preferences are reflected in party programmes and, ultimately, in government policy (e.g., Dalton et al., 2011; Przeworski et al., 1999). In the multi-level context of European Union (EU) politics, however, assessing policy representation is challenging.