One of the big question in the European Parliament Elections 2019 is sustainable energy. The liberal-conservative political party Moderaterna in Sweden has stated during their EU-election campaign that “Nuclear power is climate smart”. This is not totally true. Moderaterna stated this slogan in different social media as Twitter and Instagram. The slogan is also reported…
Article 13 of the new European copyright law anticipates a lot of resistance. The law wants to ensure that content creators are better protected. On March 26, a Flemish member of the European Parliament Anneleen Van Bossuyt (N-VA) voted against the European reformation of copyright law. In an article that appeared on the website of…
On March 23rd, 2019 Heinz-Christian Strache, Austria’s vice-chancellor and party head of the right wing party FPÖ, stated that “Turkey continues to receive European tax money” and demanded on his Facebook page that EU payments towards Turkey had to stop. But is it true that the EU is still paying money to Turkey as a…
On May 4th, Nicola Zingaretti – newly elected secretary of the Italian Democratic Party – firmly stated that, “under the current Lega – Movimento 5 stelle government, the unemployment rate is consistently growing”. This claim has turned out to be false.
In mid-June 2018, US president Donald Trump tweeted that the crime rate in Germany rose by more than ten percent because of the immigrants who were allowed into the country in recent years. Is this just another speculative Trump-Tweet or a disconcerting development? Since the beginning of 2017, the Federal Office for Migrants and Refugees…
Dutch MEP Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy recently tweeted that there are still millions of fraudulent diesel cars driving around in Europe. He also claims that the European Union does not take any proper action against those vehicles. But are these numbers correct? And do EU-countries truly ignore what is better known as ‘dieselgate’?
According to a study conducted by the Ifo, under the leadership of German physics professor Christoph Buchal, the CO2 emissions of electric vehicles are higher than those of diesel cars. The Belgian newspaper De Standaard published this claim on their website on the 18th of April. We rate this claim as mostly false. Europe wants…
A candidate for the upcoming European Parliament elections, Tihomir Lukanić, expressed his concern with the implementation of 5G network at a press conference held by a Croatian political party Živi Zid (Human Shield). The claim turns out to be mostly false. The statement rose some questions in the media and provoked discussion on the dangers…
Does crime increase with migration? German right-wing politicans like Alice Weidel of the right-wing populist party AfD says ‘yes’. The criminal statistics seem to support this claim but the number of suspected criminals is small in all population groups. This quote is an excerpt of a Facebook post Alice Weidel published on 25 March 2019.…
In an article from the news site ‘De Standaard’ (date: March 8th), Brussels Airlines claims that no one takes the airplane only to travel from Brussels to Paris. This statement was made in the debate on the impact of short flights on climate change. In the article there is no mention of which sources or data…
What role did the media play in the run-up to the Dutch provincial and Senate elections of 20 March? These were won by the far-right populist Forum for Democracy and its leader Thierry Baudet. Shouldn’t the media have fact-checked, corrected and brought to attention the danger that the party and its leader present? This is…
A young Austrian politician and candidate for the EU parliament election recently stated that there were between „25.000 and 30.000 lobbyists“ working in Brussels“ spending around 1,15 billion Euros (yearly) in order to influence policies and laws. One would assume that numbers are easy to verify. We thought so as well. However, we got confronted…
On March the 4th, 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted “an appeal” to Europe.
On the 14th of March, the British Parliament decided they don’t want a no-deal. The House of Commons voted by 312 to 308 to reject a no-deal Brexit under any circumstances.
Italy’s intelligence services warn of increasing violence against immigrants
The number of attacks on migrants has increased in Italy. Matteo Salvini is accused of this. Also, he is accused in connections with Russia.
News is everywhere, in these times everybody is a journalist. You can start your own newsblog or pick up your phone and make a video about a popular subject. Therefore it is hard for traditional media to compete with these free sources. But are they just as correct as our beloved newspaper? News is there…
The second report on the EU Fact Check concerns a publication on the risk of cyber-attacks, ahead of the European elections next May. We have chosen this subject because it is a matter of broader interest and involves state governments, especially in Europe, giants of digital services, public opinion, and the media. It is of…
It isn’t enough for us to feel that we are EU citizens. We also need some concrete ways to get our voices heard. We were born after 1995 when Finland joined the EU, so we have lived our whole lives as EU citizens. It doesn’t always feel like that because decision-making feels very distant. In…
Analysing the speech of Cristian Escribano and Sergio Santamaría at the Committee on Petitions of the European Parliament was not easy, so we divided the task in different stages. First of all, we decided to split the group, in order to make things easier. The first part of the group took care of the context…
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.
At the EJTA Teachers’ Conference in Dortmund (October 2019) practical details were discussed and a new publication schedule was created for autumn 2019.
By January-February 2019 a manual with guidelines and tips & tricks will be published and on 13-14 February 2020 a second Bootcamp will be organised in Ljubljana, with financial help from the Evens Foundation. This Train the Trainer will be focussing on Central Eastern European countries, but also on new participants that want to publish on the platform.
All the information about this event: nadia.vissers@ap.be
“What is this politician saying??” Did you read or hear a politician or public figure make a questionable claim? Send us an email with the claim and maybe we will fact-check it.
Please include the source (url and date) where you found the claim.
