EUfactcheck in 2024-2025

In May 2024 the EUfactcheck programme successfully factchecked the EU elections for the second time.  From academic year 2024-205 onwards the EUfactcheck programme will offer two different ‘tracks’ for EJTA member schools to participate.
* Individual schools can still use the EUfactcheck website as a platform to publish their students’ factchecks. This can be done at any convenient moment throughout the year, that fits the curriculum of the study programme. Please contact the EUfactcheck editorial team.
* Each year another EJTA member school will organise an intensive factchecking week, the EUfactcheck Lab, funded by Erasmus short mobility. Other EJTA member schools are welcome to join with up to 6 students and one teacher (Erasmus Blended Intensive Programme). Please contact the EUfactcheck programme manager for more details. In 2024 the EUfactcheck Lab covered the EU elections, in 2025 the topic is ‘Climate Reporting’.

EUfactcheck, an initiative of the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA) fights mis- and disinformation about European policies and topics. Journalism students from all over Europe factcheck claims and statements made by politicians and others and rate them. Our focus is not to debunk fake news but to give correct information to the reader.

Latest fact-checks

fact checking

Mostly false: new measures drop Moldova’s vaccination rate by almost 60%

With less than 40% of the population having been administered two doses, Moldova lags behind EU countries in the area of vaccination against covid19; an important concern for its national law-making authorities. After loosing its parliamentary majority in July 2021, the Moldovan Socialist Party claimed that the new government’s measures led to a near 60%…

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Mostly true: “Teachers’ salaries in Germany are higher than the national average”

On September 1, 2021,  “Deutsche Welle” published an article titled “How much do school teachers earn in Germany and can they be granted gifts?” Its author, Xenia Safronova, a journalist, claims that German teachers are paid 3 to 5 thousand euro per month on average, and this meets the benchmark of «higher than average» in…

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False: Italians stormed a mall to protest green passports

On November 20, 2020, a video appeared on the Georgian TikTok and Facebook, claiming that Italians had stormed a mall and, in this way, protested the demand for green passports.  One of the sources of the video is a Georgian user, who published the video with hashtags #nocovidfascism #nogreenpassports #nocovidpassports #nodiscriminationagainstnon-vaccinated #nocovidterror #nogreenpass. A video posted…

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fact checking

Mostly false: “Postal voting is a big problem and electoral fraud is a sad truth in Germany”

On August 15th 2021, the German right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) claimed on Facebook that postal voting in Germany is “not a solution, but a problem” and that every election year has significant cases of electoral fraud. In the German federal election 2021, AfD member Björn Höcke called the people to go to…

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Mostly true: Germany has not let only urgently needed specialists into the country

The German right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) ranks among the harshest critics of the countries refugee policy. In November 2021, the representative spokesman of the party, Stephan Brandner, released a statement in which he claims that not only urgently needed specialists have been let into the country. We rate this claim as mostly true.…

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Mostly true: “In 2023, Germany lacks 15 to 20 gigawatt of secured power output”

Harald Schwarz, Professor for energy distribution and high voltage technology at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus – Sentencer, stated in an article released on 7th May 2021 on tagesschau.de that in 2023 Germany lacks 15 to 20 gigawatt of secured power output. This claim turns out to be mostly true. In light of the…

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Mostly True: “Left-wing extremism continues to grow and grow stronger in Germany”

The German politician Malte Kaufmann from the right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) wants to classify anti-fascist groups as terrorist networks and have them banned. He cites the rising numbers of left-wing extremist crimes in Germany as justification. The claim turns out to be mostly true. The reason for Kaufmann’s claim was an article by…

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Mostly true: No major sporting event has yet improved the human rights situation in the hosting country

The director of the organisation Human Rights Watch Germany, Wenzel Michalski, has again criticised the upcoming World Cup in Qatar. He claims that major sporting events never lead to an improvement of human rights in the hosting country. This statement is mostly true. Frequently, major sporting events are held in countries where human rights organisations…

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Latest blog posts

The Euro-fraud, from Brussels to Messina: how the Mafia cheats on the European funds destined to the agriculture

The European Union has been adding funds to the Mafia bosses’ accounts for seven years. From 2010 to 2017 10 million euros coming from EU funds have been allocated to 151 farms owned by Nebrodi’s family in Sicily. A massive fraud against the rural developments programmes (EAFRD) that has critically damaged the Italian rural economy.…

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European Journalism Training Association EJTA
Council of Europe
evens foundation
Group photo EUFACTCHECK 240119

The EUFACTCHECK project

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.

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.

Our history

After the success of the students’ publications, the participants of EJTA’s fact-checking project EUFACTCHECK decided at the EJTA AGM in Paris (July 2019) to move on with the project and to take new steps in the academic year 2019-2020.

By January-February 2019 a manual with guidelines and tips & tricks was published. In February 2020 a second Bootcamp will be organised in Ljubljana, with financial help from the Evens Foundation. This Train the Trainer focused on Central Eastern European countries, some new schools joined this project.
During corona the EJTA-schools continued to verify claims and publish fact checks. Now we are looking ahead to the 2024 EU elections.

For information about the EUfactcheck project please contact the programme manager: carien.touwen@hu.nl 

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