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.
In an article on the Viennese online news portal, www.vienna.at, Julia Herr, Austrian Social Democratic Party candidate for the European parliament election, was recently quoted, that there were supposedly „between 25.000 to 30.000 lobbyists“ working in Brussels. According to the article, Herr had made this claim on March 5th, 2019 during a discussion on the…
At the end of February, British Prime Minister Theresa May posted a video on her Twitter profile containing a number of statements. She talked about increased employment, increased wages and reduced national debt. Research has shown that this is mostly true. “We have more people at work than ever before.” A first thing Theresa May…
On March the 4th Dutch leader of the right-wing Forum for Democracy Thierry Baudet reacted to a statement by liberal politician Rob Jetten about homophobia in The Netherlands. Baudet stated on Twitter: ,,Jetten’s anger about the increased homophobia in The Netherlands is justified, but he doesn’t see the causes: the uncontrolled immigration and the…
According to a Daily Express article, thousands of EU officials are earning more than 290.000 a year, which is more than German Chancellor Angela Merkel. We rate the claim as uncheckable. The salaries of EU officials have been a wildly debated topic over the years. Last month, the Daily Express reported on the German…
On 15 January 2019, Merja Kyllönen, the Member of the European Parliament, questioned the legality of the EU-Morocco Agreement in her tweet. According to her, an addendum to the agreement does not comply with the decision made by the Court of Justice of the European Union regarding the adjacent waters of Western Sahara. The claim…
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.
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
