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 a video, EU lead candidate of the right-wing populist party AfD, Maximilian Krah, criticized the EU digital laws that recently came into force. The Digital Service Act, for example, “is intended to prevent unorthodox and creative ideas from being shared on the internet”, said Krah. However, a look at the facts shows that this…
Amira Mohamed Ali, a German politician of the new left-conservative party ‘Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht’, claimed “The Ukrainian leadership says that it wants to continue fighting, but the many thousands of deserters who are trying to leave Ukraine say something different.” This statement turned out to be uncheckable. Amira Mohamed Ali has been a member of…
Dutch ECR Group vice president Robert Roos claims: “Energy and food are becoming more expensive and companies are leaving. It is time to stop the green deal.” This statement turned out to be mostly false. On 12 March 2024, the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR Group) tweeted a quote from their vice president Robert…
On May 11th, German politician Sahra Wagenknecht from the BSW – Reason and Justice party said in an interview: “Every second immigrant who comes to Germany has no right to protection at all, but can usually still stay and receive social benefits.” The claim turns out to be false. Wagenknecht uses a type of framing…
The March 2024 IPSOS poll exclusively for Euronews reveals that fighting inflation is the top priority for Portuguese citizens. However, Portuguese voters are also concerned about social inequalities and economic growth, with little difference between the three issues. In fact, in March 2024, less than three months before the European elections, 84% of Portuguese voters…
During an interview on Croatian Radiotelevision on the 10th of May, the Croatian EU Parliament candidate Katarina Peović claimed: “Only 1% of the budget of the European Union is a share of the GDP of all countries. America has 33% of its budget in relation to GDP.” By comparing the budget of the EU and…
On April 30th 2024, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), published a reel on their official Instagram channel where they had this claim: “We (Germany) are the biggest net contributors, but are poorer, have to work longer, and we have less home ownerships than most of the EU-members”. They also showed statistics to prove the claim…
On May 11th 2024 the Danish politician and member of the European parliament Anders Vistisen posted on plattform X that almost 60% of all violent crimes in Germany are committed by men with migrant background. After checking the figures it turns out, that the claim by Vistisen is false. Where the figures come from The…
On 29th of February 2024, the Romanian news website Știripesurse.ro published a news article, “Von der Leyen does not exclude banning TikTok in the EU if she is re-elected as head of the European”, in the context of the European elections. Von der Leyen, the candidate for the presidency of the European Commission and its…
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán launched the European Election Campaign of the political party Fidesz. Throughout his speech, he claimed that: “In 2010 the Hungarian economy was about half the size it is today. To put it another way, in fourteen years we have almost doubled the size of the Hungarian economy. […] Today Hungary’s…
This blog post reveals why the tweet of an UN representative, claiming that just 0.3% of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in lower-income countries, was not as easy to fact check as initially believed. Strictly, the statement can be seen as false, but does the complexity of the according figures even allow a definite judgment?…
It is the year 2070, and I have to explain to young people what ‘a tree’ is. I have to tell them that the Amazon desert used to be full of them, but they have been burnt down. That our land is one of the reasons why we can no longer breathe. Tell me: how…
It still seems like serendipity for refugees to receive an authorisation in their destination countries. We’ve listed several stats to explain the asylum process difficulties and taken a look at the different initial situations of Croatia, Germany, Greece, France and Italy, as well as the role of Turkey. For further details our factcheck: “Mostly true:…
Migration, as soon as that word is mentioned, negative connotations popped into our minds. The media often “accidentally” omits the positive aspects of migration. “Migrants take all our money!”, we hear often. What if that’s not quite the case after all? With the past migratory wave, the word migration has acquired a negative connotation. Countries…
In September 2015, at the 70th session of the General Assembly, The UN General Assembly has set 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 related targets for the international community. The fourth global goal is formulated as “ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all”.
On April 23, RBC.ru published that: “Russian Direct Investment Fund compared mortality after vaccination with Sputnik V and other vaccines.” The publication says that the death rate per 1 million people after vaccination with a Russian vaccine is significantly lower than with foreign vaccines. So, for Sputnik, this indicator stands at 2, and the leader…
Isn‘t it great news? Wind energy overtook coal power as the largest energy source in Germany. In our fact check, we confirmed this fact as mostly true. However, wind power is also controversial. What are the downsides? The online news portal of the public broadcasters of Germany,Tagesschau.de subliminally glorifies the rapid rise of wind energy…
“We must expel all illegal immigrants and close our external borders,” expresses Nicolas Bay, vice-president of the European Identity and Democracy Group, during the plenary session of 19 January. Relying on the statistics mentioned in the Frontex press release about irregular migrants, Bay creates the image of an unmanageable flow of people entering Europe without…
Having uncomplicated access to sexual rights is still very difficult these days. We explored the difficulty of accessing SRHR (sexual and reproductive health and rights) in times of the Corona pandemic. The topic of SRHR deals with issues such as sexual health, sexual rights, reproductive health and reproductive rights. These basic human rights include issues…
The right-winged political group in the European Parliament, Identity and Democracy (ID), posted the following on their Twitter feed: “Ursula von der Leyen is forcing EU-members to go carbon-neutral whilst taking a private jet for half of her worldwide missions.” The investigation of this claim accusing the European Commission President on January 8th led to…
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
