EUfactcheck #10 ‘EU Elections 2024’

This spring season students from the EJTA journalism schools will once again check statements about topics in the upcoming EU elections. In their home universities and in cooperation with students from other EJTA schools they will produce fact checks, analyses and blogs. We expect to publish the first posts in early April. Follow us here or on  X and on our Facebook page.

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

Latest fact-checks

fact-check uncheckable

Uncheckable: ‘In Belgium, hundreds of radicalized prisoners can walk around freely’

On March 22nd 2021, the news site Nieuws365 published an official statement of the right-wing populist political party Vlaams Belang. According to their chairman of the department of Brussels and senator Bob de Brabandere, 398 prisoners who were classified as radicalised were released in the past five years, which he claims is problematic.This statement turns…

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Mostly true: “More than 80% of COVID19 vaccines have been given in higher-income countries compared with just 0,3% in lower-income countries”

On May 8th 2021 Melissa Fleming, who works at the UN as Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, tweeted about a great inequality between the distribution of COVID-19 vaccinations. She claimed that high income countries have received more than 80% of the vaccinations in comparison to low income countries who obtained only 0.3%. The claim turns out…

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Mostly true: “Belgium is one of the European countries contributing most to tropical deforestation”

On Wednesday 14 April, an article (pay wall, Dutch) appeared on the website of Flemish newspaper De Morgen on a WWF report (Dutch) on tropical deforestation. It states that Belgium is one of the largest deforesters in Europe, per capita. The claim turns out to be mostly true. Belgium is indeed one of the European…

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Mostly true: Unauthorized refugees in need of protection are receiving rejections in the EU

The refugee policies within EU states are struggling with transparency and consistency. According to a Deutsche Welle article, Catherine Woolard (director of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles) said that asylum decision-making in Europe even resembles a lottery game, meaning that people often end up being rejected even though they need protection. By researching…

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True: “The roar of traffic and aircraft are linked to negative health effects”

On 16 March 2021, BBC Online reported on negative health effects linked to noise pollution. The article claims that living near an airport or motorway has been shown to have a negative impact on our health. This is also confirmed by scientists who point to the effects of noise on humans. This claim is true.…

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Mostly true: “Without immigration, economic growth risks being undermined”

“The corona crisis has reduced migration flows worldwide. That has implications for prosperity. In rich countries, economic growth without immigration risks being undermined.” This claim from the German statistical bureau Destatis, published in Belgian newspaper De Standaard from 10 February 2021, turns out to be mostly true. Immigration is a global phenomenon with Europe as…

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False: The European Economic and Social Committee paid a fee to its members for travel expenses even though the sessions were conducted virtually

In April, a prominent Croatian news outlet called Jutarnji list published an article stating that members of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), including nine Croats, receive a daily allowance of 290 euros per day for online meetings, and these per diems are intended to reimburse travel expenses. The statement that Jutarnji list reports…

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fact checking

Mostly False: “The refugee crisis has made Germany more insecure”

The German right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) criticizes the refugee policy by Angela Merkel in Germany. In a press release from April 2019, Chairman Alexander Gauland claimed: Migrants drive up the crime rate in Germany. Especially now with the federal election upcoming, the AfD still holds this position – even though the refugee crisis is…

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Mostly true: “Wind is the most important source of energy“

On 5thMarch 2021, Tagesschau.de reported on the energy supply in Germany and stated wind as the most important source of electricity. They claim that in 2020 for the first time more electric power had been generated with wind energy than with coal and that renewable energy achieves a record high. The claim turns out to…

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Latest blog posts

Blog: Why and How Russian Disinformation targets Europe and the EU in Georgia

The Kremlin is engaged in hybrid warfare in order to strengthen its positions all over the world. To achieve its geopolitical goals, Russian authorities use a mix of different tools, including military, financial, economic, cultural and informational tools. During the last decade, the Kremlin has intensified the use of propaganda and disinformation as a weapon…

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Blog: Did a huge crowd of Golden Dawn’s supporters gather for the announcement of the party’s European Parliament ticket?”

The fact-check of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on 10 April:https://eufactcheck.eu/factcheck/mostly-true-huge-crowd-of-3000-supporters-of-the-golden-dawn-party-gathers-for-the-announcement-its-european-parliament-ticket/ concerns a publication that refers to the event of the Greek far-right party Golden Dawn for the announcement of its prospective MEPs. The publication has been presented and analyzed in a misleading way as excessive titles were used that do not correspond to reality and…

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Several initiatives are analysing the spread and combatting fake news.

Blog: Disinformation before the European elections – how big is the threat?

Since the controversial Facebook scandal, which was uncovered at the beginning of 2018, the topic of disinformation on the internet has become the focus of many discussions in the US election campaign. Even before the German federal election in September 2017, there were warnings to be vigilant against possible disinformation campaigns and propaganda incitement. Recently,…

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Blog: When, finally, did the deadline for submitting applications to participate in the 2019 European parliament elections for Greek citizens who have their residence in other EU countries expire?

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…

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Blog: The curious and complex relationship between European and national legislation

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…

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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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