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…
On April 27, 2022, Brussels Times published the article “Major Belgian cities in precarious water situation” where it claimed that most of Wallonia and some of Flanders are depleting their renewable water resources at the highest rate in northern Europe. However, it seems that the author misinterpreted data from Aqueduct making the claim mostly false.…
Belgian Member of Parliament Hans Verreyt [of the nationalistic Vlaams Belang party] was quoted saying, “The inactivity rate among non-EU foreigners is 44.2 percent and among women it is even 59.3 percent,” in his party’s official article. These figures are correct. However, Verreyt carries on: “Anyone who continues to argue that migration is necessary to…
In July 2021, housing prices in Europe had increased by 30.9% since 2010, according to data by Eurostat. A situation that has left many Europeans unable to buy their own property. In Belgium, Tine Heyse, a politician for the left-wing party Groen, stated that ‘if the current housing conditions in Ghent don’t change, 40% of…
On November 9, 2021, Flemish newspaper “De Morgen” published an article titled “Belgium loses more terrain on climate index: 49th place between Belarus and Slovenia.” Does Belgium really perform that bad in the Climate Change Performance Index compared to other European countries? Yes, it does. What is the CCPI? The Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI)…
On January 15 2022, the chairman of the far-left party PVDA Raoul Hedebouw joined Conner Rousseau, chairman of left-wing party Vooruit, in an interview with De Morgen to discuss the possibility of releasing the Covid-vaccine patents. During this interview Hedebouw claimed that “of all European countries, Belgium blocks the waiver to release Covid-vaccine patents for…
Deloitte Belgium, the Belgian subsidiary of the global corporate services conglomerate, claimed in its yearly press release of 2020 that the company was able to reduce its carbon emissions by a third over the last three years. This claim turns out to be uncheckable. Deloitte is globally settled in over 150 countries with Deloitte Central…
On Wednesday 14 April, an article (pay wall, Dutch) appeared on the website of Flemish newspaper De Morgen on a WWF report (Dutch) on tropical deforestation. It states that Belgium is one of the largest deforesters in Europe, per capita. The claim turns out to be mostly true. Belgium is indeed one of the European…
Wpolitce.pl – a popular Polish right-wing news portal and TVP Info, a state news channel, report on alleged human trafficking taking place at Men Having Babies conference in Brussels. Misconception caused by terminology used in an article Due to the conservative predilection of the reporter – Grzegorz Górny – an article gains a tabloid tint.…
Information that Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo announced a curfew was published at the Russian Internet portal “Izvestia” on October 16, 2020. The news portal says that since October 19 a curfew starts from midnight to 5 am for a month period, Christmas markets will be canceled, cafes and restaurants will be closed.