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

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Uncheckable: “Russian news services advertise Covid-19 demonstrations in Germany”

Thomas Haldenwang, president of the German intelligence service “Verfassungsschutz”, claimed that “the Internet channel RT Deutsch and the news agency Sputnik advertised so-called Hygienedemos and exaggerated them afterwards“. Our research doesn’t prove Haldenwang right but it’s possible that the Verfassungsschutz uses different sources which is why we assess the claim as uncheckable. The Federal Office…

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fact checking

Mostly false: “The first doses of the vaccine will be available in Italy in early December”

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced that the anti-Covid drug will begin to be distributed in just over a month: “If the final stages of preparation of the Oxford-Irbm Pomezia-AstraZeneca vaccine will be completed in the coming weeks, the first doses will be available in early December. The statement, taken from the book “Why Italy…

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Mostly true: Belgium tightens measures, imposes a curfew and closes restaurants

Information that Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo announced a curfew was published at the Russian Internet portal “Izvestia” on October 16, 2020. The news portal says that since October 19 a curfew starts from midnight to 5 am for a month period, Christmas markets will be canceled, cafes and restaurants will be closed.

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Mostly True: German newspaper claims “people are hoarding cash” in the crisis

Referring to the European Central Bank (ECB) the german „Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung“ (FAZ) headlined on September 24th, 2020: “In the crisis, people are hoarding cash.“ Even if the term “hoarding” is incorrect in this case, all other figures, facts, quotations and the context are correct, which is why the claim is to be assessed as…

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fact checking

Mostly false: “The reason the USA show so many cases is that they test more”

Donald Trump’s Twitter posting on 9 July 2020 establishes a correlation between the corona tests performed in a country and the confirmed Covid-19 cases in that country. Explicitly, he claims for the USA: “For the 1/100th time, the reason we show so many Cases, compared to other countries that haven’t done nearly as well as…

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Mostly true: “Twice as many men die from coronavirus than women”

In a headline on April 5, 2020, the Copenhagen Post, an English-language publication in Denmark, wrote that “Twice as many men dead from coronavirus as women.” In the article itself, the publication sources the claim from a report released by Statens Serum Institut, an official institution operated under the Danish Ministry of Health that aims…

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False: Croatia is one of the most tolerant countries in the world

According to an article published in the online version of Croatian daily newspaper ‘Večernji list’, titled “List of the most tolerant countries in the world has been published. Where is Croatia?”, the country is very highly ranked. However, the study quoted in the article uses the world “inclusiveness” and does not mention “tolerance” anywhere. Therefore,…

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Uncheckable: “Every euro that we give towards the EU budget, 12 euros will be returned to the Dutch business community”

Dutch politicians are regularly seen in late night talk shows, especially during the corona crisis. In the Dutch talk show ‘Op1’ party leader Rob Jetten from the social-liberal party D66 took part in a discussion and tried to explain how important the proposed Merkel-Macron Corona virus relief agreement is for the EU and the Netherlands.…

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False: “Gender violence is a big lie. […] it’s like denying day or night”.

Javier Ortega-Smith, the Secretary-General of the Spanish far-right-wing party, Vox called gender violence a ‘big lie’ after the celebration of the new judicial year in the Community of Madrid, in September 9th of 2019. There was a significant emphasis on gender violence  in that celebration and this made him state that ‘violence is violence and …

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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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