Mostly true: “62% of greenhouse gas emissions released during extraction, processing and manufacturing”

The claim is backed by an actual study, but experts suggest the exact percentages are difficult to determine. On 23 January 2019, Mari Pantsar, the Director of carbon-neutral circular economy of Sitra, a Finnish Innovation Fund, claimed on Twitter: “A 1.5 degree world can only be “circular.” That’s why the #circulareconomy has to be placed…

Read more

Mostly true: “Foods within the European Union are traceable all along the supply chain”

At a press conference on July 11, 2018, the European Commission stated: “Foods within the European Union are traceable all along the supply chain.” This assertion is partly true. This was a response to Thilo Bode, founder of the non-governmental organization Foodwatch, which fights for consumer protection; he had questioned the president of the European…

Read more
fact checking

Mostly false: “Catalan public media lacks objectivity and pluralism”

In recent years, public media in Spain have been questioned because they are commonly accused of serving particular political tendencies. In the case of the Catalan public broadcasting, the claim arrived to the Committee on Petitions of the European Parliament in January 2019. Two complainants accused the Catalan public television (TV3) and radio station (Catalunya…

Read more

Mostly true: “More Dutch weed farms in foreign countries”

On the 3rd of February 2019, several newspapers including Metro reported that more weed farms with Dutch characteristics were being discovered in countries across Europe. The articles were written due to the report from the investigative journalism programme Reporter Radio on Dutch radio station NPO Radio 1. The claim seems to be mostly true. In…

Read more

Mostly true: “Kosovo’s import tariffs are a clear violation of CEFTA”

The Dutch newspaper Trouw published an article on February 1st about import tariffs of 100 percent on Serbian products like milk. According to Trouw, this is problematic, since the imposed tariffs are – according to the EU – a direct violation of the regional Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA). Our findings suggest this is…

Read more