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 November 7, 2024, Alice Weidel, co-chair of the party AfD, stated in a ZDF television interview that Germany has the highest energy costs worldwide, which she claimed was making its economy noncompetitive. This claim turns out to be mostly false. The interview took place after the German government coalition breakdown. Weidel used this claim to advocate…
“Of the men who arrived in Germany in 2015/16, 86 percent are now working. That’s more than the average number of men who were born in Germany, which is only 81 percent.” This statement was said by Lea Reisner, candidate of the party “Die Linke”, on May 22 2024 in the MDR talk show Fakt ist! However,…
On July 12, 2024, the now former FDP Secretary General Bijan Djir-Sarai urged an extension of the border controls that were carried out in Germany during the European Championships in an interview with SPIEGEL. He justified this to SPIEGEL by saying that permanent controls were “a necessity” in order to “limit irregular migration to Germany”.…
On October 9, 2024, a TV debate aired on the German news channel “Welt” featuring Alice Weidel and Sahra Wagenknecht. During the debate, Ms. Wagenknecht claimed that Germany’s defense expenditures had risen from 34 billion euros in 2014 to 90 billion euros in 2024. This statement is true. The two politicians represent two highly controversial parties. Alice Weidel…
On March 03, 2023, the German politician Heidi Reichinnek from the Left Party posted a TikTok claiming, that 80% of working women cannot provide for themselves and a child in the long term. This claim turns out to be mostly true. Reichinneks TikTok contains an excerpt from her speech to the Bundestag, in which she addresses the…
On March 7, 2024 the German news program “Tagesschau” released an article about the current number of asylum applications, revealing a notable decline in first-time applications for asylum in February. This claim is true. The article states that the number of first-time applications for asylum have decreased in comparison to last year. There were 19.494…
On May 3, 2024, German right-wing populist politician Maximilian Krah, who was the AfD’s lead candidate for the 2024 European elections, claimed on Tiktok that the European Central Bank was destroying people’s savings and that, although it was promised that the euro would be as stable as the German Mark, it was as stable as…
On April 10, 2024, the Belgian political party ‘Groen’ published an article on their website claiming that 35% of all waste in the European Union originates from the construction sector. The claim turns out to be true. The party published this article following the passage of a new law in the European Parliament. According to…
Maximilian Krah used to be the AfD’s lead candidate for the European elections on June 9th. He initially was elected a year ago at an AfD party conference in Magdeburg. There, he gave “Die Welt” an interview in which he said, “There is a German party that stands for prosperity, for family, for people, and…
They are small, but far from harmless when they end up in the environment. Member of the European Parliament Grace O’Sullivan (The Greens/ EFA) said that 180,000 tonnes of the granules used to produce plastic products get lost in the value chain, harming the biosphere. EUfactcheck discovered that a rather high estimate was chosen from…
When we started looking for claims that we could fact check, we came across a double interview with two Belgian politicians. One was party chairman Conner Rousseau (Vooruit), a left-wing politician and the other was party chairman Raoul Hedebouw (PvdA), an extreme left-wing politician. While reading the interview, we noticed the harsh words the two…
Introduction and context In a recent factcheck article, our colleagues from the Media University Stuttgart checked the claim of Mr. Nikola Milina, the head of Croatian police, who said that the violent pushbacks at the Croatian-Bosnian border published in October 2021 were an “individual event” and that he didn’t want such incident to “affect the…
To be honest, this last fact-checking has not been the most difficult that we have done. The claim that we chose seemed easy from the very first moment as it was not about any complex topic. Actually, both of us had doubts about whether if it was a good claim with enough base to dig…
September 12, 2021, author Carl Zimmer published in The New York Times the article “A New Company With a Wild Mission: Bring Back the Woolly Mammoth“. A group of scientists led by biologist George Church plans to revive the genome of the Woolly Mammoth and do it within six years. Dr. Church argues that their…
For our factcheck we chose the statement of a local demographer and University of Zagreb professor Nenad Pokos. In an interview for N1 television, he said that Croatia spent 24 million euros on the census in 2021, or 24 times more than Slovenia spent in 2011. He also stressed that Croatia has 2 million more…
An urgent and almost pressing undertone is given by articles such as “The EU countries in comparison: Who vaccinates faster against Covid-19?” by Euronews or “Covid vaccinations – Which country is on the top?” by ZDF which are issued to the broad German-speaking population. It brings up the question: Is this constant comparison of European…
When you work as a journalist you usually deal with a lot of different topics. If you aren’t one of those specialized reporters who cover specific events of a specific subject, then you are one of those who can talk about everything but nothing at the same time. A friend of ours who studies “International…
We examined three news portals that provide information on whether children and adolescents had more hospitalizations before and during the Corona pandemic. The articles always refer to the same primary source, the german Federal Statistical Office. Now let’s look at how different journalists and online media deal with the topic. A lack of scientific quality…
29/11/2030 To Mr. Farage, Our country is in tatters. A political system that allows self-serving opportunists, like yourself and a certain Boris Johnson, has been the downfall of our country. We are currently cut off from the rest of the world, with no routes to trade. I remember when you exclaimed that by leaving the…
In the Factcheck, we found out that one third of EU exports to South Korea are made in Germany. But what does the agreement between the EU and South Korea really mean for both sides? Who gains, who loses? An assessment by renowned experts. Free Trade versus Protectionism Free trade is the exchange of services 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
