The purpose of the study is to investigate whether schoolbooks in social science contribute to the development of students' participate competence regarding to politics. To succeed in this, the books need to cover political knowledge on the basis of three dimensions (polity, policy and politics). Furthermore, the books will need to present the EU from an internal political perspective, which includes three different criteria. This will increase the student’s credence to the European Union’s political system. A qualitative text analysis has been applied to the study and the material includes four social science books that are related to two courses in social sciences in upper secondary school. The reason is that participant competence is a goal that is included in the content of the courses. The study shows that all dimensions are present in the books, but that the authors choose to prioritize the polity and policy dimension. The result also shows that the authors do not choose to write about different parties and ideologies within the EU, which affects the other dimensions. This indicates that the books meet two of three criteria regarding the portrayal of the EU from a domestic policy perspective. The result shows that the writers fail to highlight the pluralism of views in the EU political system. The conclusion drawn is that schoolbooks can increase students' competence if used more frequently by teachers in EU-education.