EUfactcheck #10 ‘EU Elections 2024’

This spring season students from the EJTA journalism schools will once again check statements about topics in the upcoming EU elections. In their home universities and in cooperation with students from other EJTA schools they will produce fact checks, analyses and blogs. We expect to publish the first posts in early April. Follow us here or on  X and on our Facebook page.

EUfactcheck, an initiative of the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA) fights misinformation about European policies and topics. Journalism students from all over Europe factcheck claims made by politicians and others and rate them. Our focus is not to debunk fake news or disinformation but to give correct information to the reader.

Latest fact-checks

Uncheckable: “Oktoberfest 2023: Numbers of assaults against girls and women significantly decrease”

In an article from the German news website “Merkur.de”, journalist Lisa Metzger claims that the number of assaults against girls and women decreased significantly. According to our research, this statement appears to be uncheckable. In the article “Wiesn 2023: Significantly fewer assaults on women than the previous year – Suspected cases of date rape drugs…

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Mostly True: “Unemployment rate in the euro area at record low”

On 2nd of October 2023 the German newspaper FAZ published an article stating that the unemployment rate in the 20 eurozone countries in august 2023 was 6.4% (10.9 million people). The headline of the article is: “Unemployment rate in the euro area at record low”. This claim turns out to be mostly true. The German…

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FALSE: “On average, a Flemish livestock farm emits 20 to 28 tonnes of ammonia”

The Flemish Minister of Environment, Zuhal Demir (N-VA), said about the nitrogen crisis in Flanders that “30 tonnes of ammonia is emitted by an average Flemish livestock farm“. Although the minister at first maintained that her figure was correct, we at EUfactcheck made her administration admit that it was a ‘typo’. The claim thus turns…

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fact checking

Mostly false: Fewer than 4,400 wind turbines generate the same as three nuclear power plants

On March 1st, the Dutch right-wing political party JA21 tweeted that they would not want to see the Netherlands covered with wind turbines but instead prefer to build nuclear power plants. JA21 asserts nuclear energy to be a “clean and stable energy source”. In their tweet they claim that 4,400 wind turbines generate the same…

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FALSE: “Belgium has the highest public expenditure and the highest structural deficit”

Bart De Wever, the mayor of the Belgian city of Antwerp and chairman of the Flemish right-wing political party N-VA, claimed that “Belgium has the highest public expenditure and the highest structural deficit of the EU.” EUfactcheck looked into this claim and the source it was based on, and found out that the statement made…

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Mostly true: “Sustainable aviation leads to job loss, higher travel costs and low passenger demand”

An article titled “Sustainable Aviation: Increased cost of greener aviation will curtail pax demand” posted in TR Business (a business to business trade magazine) on 17 April 2023 reports that greener aviation will lead to a loss of thousands of jobs, higher travel costs and low passenger demand. As climate change due to air carbonization…

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Mostly true: ‘Terrifying interactive map reveals the areas that could be plunged underwater by 2050’

On the 19th of February 2023 Sam Tonkin, a Britain based journalist from the Daily Mail published an article about sea level rises around the United Kingdom that could cause floodings in the country. Tonkin stated in the article: ‘Terrifying interactive map reveals the areas that could be plunged UNDERWATER by 2050 amid sea level…

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Mostly true: Violence against emergency workers is on the rise

On January 18, 2023, Marie-Fleur Agema, a member of the political party Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom, PVV), said: “Violence against emergency workers is on the rise… One in five healthcare workers wants to leave their job in healthcare because of aggression and fear of aggression.” The claim turns out to be mostly…

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False: “Cars are related to pollution, but have nothing to do with climate change”

Former Barcelona mayor Xavier Trias stated in an interview that “cars are related to pollution, but have nothing to do with climate change”. He added that “we should not mix concepts, since then good-faith people end up joining battles which are not connected”. After analyzing different scientific reports, the claim turns out to be false. …

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Latest blog posts

Blog: Between St. Patrick and the Pope – How hard it is not to be a Catholic

Based on our fact check Mostly true : “Catholic Church loses members – Europe-wide”, we examined membership figures from five countries in Europe. Among them, some Catholic strongholds are already named in the original source. Our experience? The ways of the Church are unfathomable. The headlines surrounding the scandals of the Catholic Church are piling…

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Media analysis: Brexit aftermath through the lens of leading newspapers in Spain, France and the United Kingdom

Brexit became a reality at the end of 31st December 2020. Depending on the media, perspectives about this event have been different. In this media analysis, we have thoroughly examined nine articles from three leading newspapers in three countries: La Vanguardia (Spain), Le Monde (France) and The Guardian (United Kingdom). These three newspapers were chosen…

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Blog: The Mediterranean, a far-right sea of misinformation

On November 26th 2019, Jorge Buxadé, Spanish delegate for the far-right political party VOX at the European Parliament, made a speech in which he affirmed that the current government’s immigration policies are to blame for making Spain’s coasts “the principal entrance for illegal immigration in Europe”. In our fact-check we analysed these assertions to prove…

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evens foundation
Group photo EUFACTCHECK 240119

The EUFACTCHECK project

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.

Our history

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 

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