During a public hearing of a committee of the German parliament, Marc Bernhard of the right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) criticized the German strategy for climate protection. To his mind, reducing national CO2 emissions is not effective. In this fact check we show that Bernhard uses correct numbers but interprets them in a misleading…
In March 2019, the German Teachers‘ Association approved of the decision of the EU Parliament to abolish the time change. However, Heinz-Peter Meidinger, president of the association, thinks there is a health risk for students if a country switches to summer time permanently: The probability of sleeping and learning problems, depression and diabetes has…
Does crime increase with migration? German right-wing politicans like Alice Weidel of the right-wing populist party AfD says ‘yes’. The criminal statistics seem to support this claim but the number of suspected criminals is small in all population groups. This quote is an excerpt of a Facebook post Alice Weidel published on 25 March 2019.…
In an article from the news site ‘De Standaard’ (date: March 8th), Brussels Airlines claims that no one takes the airplane only to travel from Brussels to Paris. This statement was made in the debate on the impact of short flights on climate change. In the article there is no mention of which sources or data…
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 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…
“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.