Using the Common Agricultural Policy as an example, this study elucidates if, to what extent, how and with what specific outcome EU policy ideas affect domestic media discourse. Drawing on recent actor-oriented approaches in new institutionalism and the concept of institutional entrepreneurship, its media analysis of German and Spanish newspapers shows how ideas diffused from the top down are actively appropriated by competing social actors in various country-specific selective and reflective ways. What is more, responses to �Europe� involve innovative usage and rearrangement of European input and domestic ideas. In addition, the media themselves play an active part in shaping national debates through their selection and agenda-setting strategies. The study thus offers in-depth empirical evidence that the diffusion of European ideas leads to heterogeneous results rather than to convergence. It demonstrates that the impact of EU policy ideas varies in terms of its extent, timing, pace and forms.