Peter Rangwe, who is a free time politician, representing the political party Socialdemokraterna (the Swedish social democratic party) claims that the figures on youth unemployment 2018 in Sweden is the lowest in 17 years. Socialdemokraterna is the now reigning party. He also claims that Sweden received economical support by the EU in 2014, to cope…
On 25 March 2019, Antti Rinne, the Chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Finland, claimed in his electoral interview that based on the experiences in Sweden, the Finnish Ministry of Finance has estimated that getting online payment terminals would prevent the grey economy from occurring by 140 million euros per year in Finland. The…
Our report on the EU Fact Check focuses on a news item which was published on Friday, March 29, 2019, on the website of the newspaper “Avgi”. More specifically, the news item was titled “The deadline for submitting applications to participate in the European elections for Greek citizens who live in another EU country expires…
In a statement for one regional TV channel, a current Croatian representative in the European Parliament and a candidate in the upcoming European elections Mrs Biljana Borzan, said that two thirds of laws that are voted for in the European Parliament are being implemented in the Croatian legislation. The statement raised the question what the…
On 18 February, the Finnish MEP Heidi Hautala claimed that Finnish National Coalition Party and United Russia have been fraternal parties for a long time. The National Coalition Party denies the cooperation with United Russia as well as sharing the same ideology, although there are reports of cooperation between the parties in the past. The…
On 28 February, MEP and Turkey-rapporteur Kati Piri, mentioned several human rights issues and pleaded not to grant Turkey EU-membership. In the popular Dutch talkshow Jinek she said that a quarter of all Turkish judges have been discharged already. In her capacity as rapporteur Piri investigates if Turkey meets the preconditions for EU-membership and if…
On March 26, 2019, the news website www.pronews.gr posted a publication entitled “ “Huge Crowd of 3,000 supporters of the Golden Dawn party gathers for the announcement its European Parliament ticket “, according to which the far-right party a day earlier organized a gathering for the announcement of its candidate MEPs. The event, as reported…
Russian news website Life.ru reported that Britain began issueing passports without the words “European Union” on the cover. This claim turns out to be true.
“Adding 3.000 customs agents, did the British people ask for this? To add 3.500 soldiers at the borders? No, they didn’t!” On the 19th of January, Marie Arena, a Belgian Socialist MEP, presented some claims about military and customs changes in the post-Brexit UK.
That is what the Belgian daily newspaper ‘Het Laatste Nieuws’ reported on February 25th . The article is based on a study from the German think tank CEP (Centre for European Policy) in which they researched whether the inhabitants of 8 Euro countries (the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) have…
During my high school years, the teachers would always tell us students about the importance of checking our sources before handing in essays, assignments and homework. The way they went on about it, nagging on us, made me understand that it was important for my schoolwork and eventually for my grades. What I didn’t quite…
On Friday, March 29, 2019 the website of the newspaper “Avgi” published a news item which was titled “The deadline for submitting applications to participate in the European elections for Greek citizens who live in another EU country expires today”. The item was chosen due to its importance for the Greek voters who live in…
When we started searching for second topic, we realized that statements of Croatian politicians are mostly based on predictions and promises. Fortunately, the political parties started to present their programmes and lists of candidates for the upcoming European elections. The candidates started to appear more in the media and the current Croatian MEP Biljana Borzan’s…
Salaries of government officials are always under scrutiny. The payment of EU officials is no exception. ‘Top EU civil servants to pocket salaries over €20,000 a month for the first time’, reads a Telegraph headline from last December. ‘10,000 European Union officials better paid than David Cameron’, wrote the same paper back in 2014. ‘Over…
During our fact checking process, we’ve learned the meaning of perseverance, when we tried calling the politicians behind the statements checked for weeks with no response. We’ve had to develop stamina, as we stayed up all night writing and then had to make it to early meetings the next morning. And let’s not forget out…
Blog: Al-Jazeera insists that extremists and nationalists are preparing to purge the European Parliament in the upcoming elections
When we started our first-check, the idea was kind of strange to us, even though we are students journalism, the concept isn’t really integrated into our news cycle. When we went to look for examples, we found fact-checks about studies, political parties, news articles but not about real people or what they say. When…
By Tringa Hasaj Russia Today (RT) UK posted a video on Twitter on March 11th 2019 about a rising of right-wing parties in Europe. We believe the claim to be mostly true. The poll was first reported on by Bild on March 8th. The survey supposedly reveals that right-wing parties in Europe will double…
In our pursuit of an interesting topic for our first fact check analysis, we decided to watch the most popular weekly Croatian TV talk show Nedjeljom u 2. In one episode, the guest was Mislav Kolakušić, a prominent judge in Zagreb’s Commercial Court who has become popular for his strong views on politics and current…
What role did the media play in the run-up to the Dutch provincial and Senate elections of 20 March? These were won by the far-right populist Forum for Democracy and its leader Thierry Baudet. Shouldn’t the media have fact-checked, corrected and brought to attention the danger that the party and its leader present? This is…
EUFACTCHECK is the fact-checking project of the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA) that intends to build a sustainable curriculum unit on fact-checking within a European network of Journalism schools.
We will publish fact-checks and blog posts to test our common methodology during the European elections.
The project gathers fact-checks from more than 150 students and staff from more than 20 EJTA schools.
Through fact-checking European political claims and trying to tackle misinformation, we want our students and our public to grow a deeper insight and interest in democratic processes, both on national and European level.
EUFACTCHECK wishes to motivate fact-based debate in the EU and to stimulate media and information literacy.
“What is this politician saying??” Did you read or hear a politician or public figure make a questionable claim? Send us an email with the claim and maybe we will fact-check it.
Please include the source (url and date) where you found the claim.
