Figure 4 – Total number of EU issues addressed per EU Head of State or Government

Some leaders however, such as Dalia Grybauskaitė, Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Antti Rinne, who covered fewer EU issues in their tweets, were also members of the European Council for only a relatively short period between January 2019 and June 2020. It can also be observed that other EU leaders in the same situation, such as Juha Sipilä (a member for five months), Alexis Tsipras (six months), Joseph Muscat (six months), Janez Janša (four months), covered more EU issues in their tweets than EU leaders who were members of the European Council for a lot longer in this time period, notably Mette Frederiksen (12 months), Robert Abela (12 months) and especially Marjan Šarec (14 months), who is not a Twitter enthusiast, who all mainly addressed domestic politics during this time. The most frequent EU issues tweeted about were: ‘interaction with other EU leaders’ (31), ‘interaction with EU representatives’ (31), ‘economic governance’ (31), ‘the multiannual financial framework (MFF)’ (31), ‘reporting after European Council meetings’ (30) and ‘Brexit’ (30). While some of the most frequently mentioned EU issues are also among the top issues tweeted on as a percentage of the leaders’ overall EU tweets, significant differences also exist