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.
On 26th November 2017, now-Italian Minister of the Interior said: “If elected, the centre-right government must guarantee 100.000 expulsions per year, in order to get half a million irregular migrants back to their countries in five years”. His promise has turned out to be false.
Reinier van Lanschot, party leader of the new, pan-European party Volt – and probable new member of the European Parliament – claims on Twitter that migrant aid is punished in several European member states. Subsequently, he asks his followers to sign a European citizen initiative to make an end to this. However, punishment of migrant…
On 21 January, Finnish parliament member Olli Immonen stated in his blog that “Finland currently has the loosest asylum policy in the Nordic countries when it comes to, for example, family reunification.” Our research shows that norms and practices related to asylum policies are so complex that it is not possible to make a reliable…
On their website, the Belgian party N-VA (member of the European Conservatives and Reformists) has stated that the monthly move of the European Parliament (EP) between Brussels and Strasbourg costs the European taxpayers 200 million euros per year. A lot of money which according to N-VA is anything but an example of good governance. The…
Sargentini: “Hungary spends 18 million euros on campaign against me”. This is what the Dutch radio news show Met het Oog op Morgen (‘In View of Tomorrow’) reported on 5 February 2019 on its website. The claim is mostly true.
On 20th February 2019 Athens Voice published an article “Microsoft: Fear of cyber attacks ahead of EU elections”, according to which the American software company Microsoft in Germany, issued a notice, aimed at politicians and civil society organizations, striking the risk of a possible hacker attack, ahead of the European elections next May. Microsoft report…
In a recent publication on the opinion page of the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, historian Ronald Havenaar tries to combat rising cultural pessimism in Europe by pointing to average voter turnouts of between 70 and 80 percent. We rate the claim as mostly false.
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…
According to a REGNUM news agency report, on January 13, Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s “National Unification” party, made a statement regarding the way out of the political crisis, but if we will turn to politician’s Twitter, an interpretation, given by Regnum can be considered as MOSTLY FALSE.
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…
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.
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
