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 18 February, the Finnish MEP Heidi Hautala claimed that Finnish National Coalition Party and United Russia have been fraternal parties for a long time. The National Coalition Party denies the cooperation with United Russia as well as sharing the same ideology, although there are reports of cooperation between the parties in the past. The…
On 28 February, MEP and Turkey-rapporteur Kati Piri, mentioned several human rights issues and pleaded not to grant Turkey EU-membership. In the popular Dutch talkshow Jinek she said that a quarter of all Turkish judges have been discharged already. In her capacity as rapporteur Piri investigates if Turkey meets the preconditions for EU-membership and if…
On March 26, 2019, the news website www.pronews.gr posted a publication entitled “ “Huge Crowd of 3,000 supporters of the Golden Dawn party gathers for the announcement its European Parliament ticket “, according to which the far-right party a day earlier organized a gathering for the announcement of its candidate MEPs. The event, as reported…
Russian news website Life.ru reported that Britain began issueing passports without the words “European Union” on the cover. This claim turns out to be true.
“Adding 3.000 customs agents, did the British people ask for this? To add 3.500 soldiers at the borders? No, they didn’t!” On the 19th of January, Marie Arena, a Belgian Socialist MEP, presented some claims about military and customs changes in the post-Brexit UK.
That is what the Belgian daily newspaper ‘Het Laatste Nieuws’ reported on February 25th . The article is based on a study from the German think tank CEP (Centre for European Policy) in which they researched whether the inhabitants of 8 Euro countries (the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) have…
On 12 February 2019 the Finnish Member of Parliament and candidate in the European elections, Ville Niinistö, tweeted that decline in insect populations form a large environmental risk. An additional tweet linked to an article published by the Finnish national broadcasting company YLE concerning the subject. Niinistö also claimed that the presumed decline should be…
In a television interview one Croatian Commercial Court judge Mislav Kolakušić announced his plans to stand as a candidate in the upcoming European Elections. The statement raised the question whether Kolakušić, being an active judge, has the right to do so. We examined national and EU laws and regulations on political participation of judges which…
The political party Groen (the Flemish green party) claims that Belgium is way behind when it comes to green energy. They also say our energy bill is ranked the third most expensive in Europe. Groen mentions this claim on both Facebook and in an article on their website. The party repeats the claim multiple times,…
On Friday 22/03/2019, at 8.20 p.m., the famous performer Uri Geller posted on his official Facebook page a text, entitled “An open letter to Theresa May”. In this Facebook post, Uri Geller, urges Theresa May to prevent Brexit. He points out that the majority of the English citizens are not in favor of Brexit and…
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
