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

Mostly true: Croatia spent 24 times more euros on census than Slovenia which has 2 million fewer citizens

In year 2021 Croatia conducted a population census which happens every ten years.  Mr Nenad Pokos, a Croatian demographer and professor, commented on it and said in the interview for the regional news channel N1: “The price of Slovenian register-based census in 2011 was one million euros, and the Croatian traditional census in 2021 cost…

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False: “Corona vaccine kills more people than all other vaccines in the past 20 years“

The European Commission is hiding fatal side effects after a corona vaccination – this is what Joachim Kuhs, Member of the European Parliament for the German right-wing populist party AfD, claims. He supports his statement with respectable sources that are right in themselves. However, his interpretation of them is wrong. On October 5, 2021, AfD…

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True: Greenhouse gas emissions have to drop 50% in eight years to stay below 1.5 degrees

As climate change becomes ever more apparent, calls for action and consistent measures are multiplying. Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), says as part of the launch of the UNEP Emissions Gap Report (EGR21) that to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, we have eight years to nearly halve greenhouse gas…

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fact checking

Mostly false: COVID-19 divides Europe into two parts

At the beginning of September 2021, a video report appeared on the website of the television news network Euronews with this headline: “Covid-19 divides Europe into two parts”. The author refers to the results of a study by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), which appeared in the same month. However, Euronews’ claim, that…

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Mostly false: Pushbacks at Croatian-BiH border are “individual events”

Nikola Milina, the head of Croatian police, said that the violent pushbacks at the Croatian-Bosnian border filmed in October 2021 were an “individual event” and that he doesn’t want that to “affect the praise the police receive for their everyday sacrificial work”. Data from NGOs and media reports show that these events may have been…

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Mostly true: “Only 11% of German citizens feel free in their everyday life during the Corona crisis”

On September 7th 2021, Alice Weidel, member of the German parliament and part of the AfD, a right-winged populist party, claimed that only 11% of  German citizens feel free in their everyday lives. She stated that the disoriented and excessive corona policy of the German federal government has played a considerable role in this. We…

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Uncheckable: Cannabis legalization leads to increased use

German politician Stephan Pilsinger (CSU) has criticized the considerations of the newly elected German government to decriminalize cannabis. He claims that after legalization, cannabis consumption will increase. Pilsinger refers to studies from the USA. Even though there are numbers which support his claim, there is no clear evidence that legalization automatically leads to more consumption.…

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Mostly true: “More hospitalizations of children with depression”

On March 30, 2021, ZEIT online claimed More hospitalizations of children with depression. Already before Covid 19 the number of young patients with depression increased by 24 percent in 2019. This claim turns out to be mostly true. The article addresses the issue of depression in children and adolescents. The author says that even before…

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Latest blog posts

Blog: How to make the world a better place

With great enthusiasm we started the European Factcheck project this winter. Working together with 19 J-schools in 15 European countries is interesting. Besides that, we underline the bigger aim of this project: teaching students verification skills to become eager journalists to make ‘a better world’. Students don’t always like doing research but when you say…

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Blog: Fact-checking the project YES! and their intention to represent the opinions of the European Youth for the upcoming elections

We discovered the survey YES! due to an article published in the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia that talked about a project run up by young people for young people. We thought that the idea was innovative, and it was a good way to make young people voices heard and vindicate their claims as well. Results…

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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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