In numerous media appearances, Jan van Aken, co-chair of German party Die Linke, has expressed his opposition to increasing Germany’s defence budget. He argues this point by highlighting the superiority of the European NATO states over Russia, citing a yearly difference of $130 billion in defence spending. This statement turned out to be mostly false.…
Belgian MEP Frédérique Ries (Renew Europe) claimed in the plenary meeting of April 10th 2024, that 30 million European citizens suffer from a rare disease. She made that claim in the context of the biggest pharmaceutical reform Renew Europe puts its shoulder under. Do 30 million Europeans really have a rare disease? According a study…
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 November 05th, 2022, Irish left-wing party Independents 4 change (I4C) MP Mick Wallace, tweeted that the “Reality is EU now spends 3 times more than Russia” on defence. After analysing the figures Mr. Wallace refers to in his claim, it becomes clear that the claim is mostly true. Numbers from 2021During a word exchange…
The current European agricultural policy runs until 2020. The discussions about this policy for 2021 have therefore started. Following this discussion, Menno Bentveld, a reporter at the Dutch national radio station NPO Radio 1 called Bas Eickhout, MEP on behalf of GroenLinks. Eickhout claimed that 80 percent of the European agricultural money goes to the…