The fact that the media of European Union (EU) countries show little interest in the EU, has long been seen as the greatest obstacle to the emergence of a European public sphere. However, today we also need to consider whether focusing on European issues is necessarily synonymous with acknowledging the desirability of a common European identity – what we might in this context refer to as convergence. Could such a focus perhaps indicate a more negative tendency instead? Populist politicians such as Boris Johnson, Viktor Orbán and Matteo Salvini often use the EU and its representatives as objects of derision in their drive to stir up antagonism towards the idea of a united Europe. However, while the populists’ obsession with the EU helps to ensure that European issues regularly dominate the media agenda in their respective countries, this is not quite the same thing as creating a European public sphere.