This paper analyzes the saliency of interest groups and political actors in EU related stories in two countries: Spain and the United Kingdom. The goal is to explore the circumstances under which different actors have the capacity to set EU issues into the media agenda. This includes a consideration of which political actors are covered more intensively by the media and which factors influence their media saliency. In this way, we will have a comprehensive perspective on how factors such as the existence or not of Eurosceptic political parties, the impact of critical junctures upon national interests, the degree of political parallelism in the media, the importance of EU events and, finally, the political position of media outlets towards the European integration process may modulate and involve important changes in the patterns of those political actors that gain media coverage and set the media agenda.