Room: STG-9 Anne Mollen It is safe to say that the EU Commission did not succeed in engaging European citizens on a large scale in political decision making processes, when they introduced the Debate Europe and later the Futurum online forum. Especially online communication with its potential to enable communication across borders was deemed relevant for a European public sphere, an informed European citizenry and a legitimate European Union. But EU officials missed to recognize that offering possibilities for communication does not automatically lead to people actually using them. Nevertheless, drawing on data from a 12-year long research project, I am going to argue that political online communication about the EU is happening online. But it might not be happening where and how officials and democratic theorists wanted it to happen. Based on my analysis of hyperlink networks and analysis of online interactions in comment forums in six European countries (AT, DK, F, GER, PL, UK) I am going to show that the current crisis triggered people’s engagement with Europe, both online and offline. Although we cannot speak of direct attributions of legitimation to the EU, Europe is becoming embedded in citizens’ everyday political talk online. Despite its national segmentation on a structural level, I am going to conclude that in people’s online communication we can still see transnational spaces of communication emerging which contribute to the constitution of Europe as a social space. Produced by Voice RepublicFor more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com