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 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 April 4, 2022, Novinite.com published an article (with no author mentioned) claiming that Bulgaria ranks second in Europe, after Romania, in terms of cash transactions, according to the Global Findex database. It is also stated that 28% of the Bulgarian population does not have a bank account and the number of ATMs is 94…
According to an article published by Berliner Morgenpost on January 6, a study of the Essen University Hospital claims that up to 500 children required treatment in intensive care units in Germany after suicide attempts. Since it is not possible to verify this statement, this claim must be classified as uncheckable. The article explains that the lockdown…
In an article titled “Chinese graphite dominance threatens electric car ambitions”, posted on 14th March 2022, “Deutsche Welle” reports that Chinese graphite dominance threatens electric car ambitions worldwide. The author Ashutosh Pandey (Senior Business Editor for DW) states that China is a dominating force in the graphite supply chain, bearing in mind that the material…
German trend researcher Corinna Mühlhausen claims to have found out that “Generation Z suffers from psychological problems more than any other generation before it”. Even though the numbers of psychotherapies of children and adolescents are rising rapidly right now, it is not possible to verify this fact clearly. Therefore this claim must be classified as…
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…
On the 2nd of December 2021 Croatian president Zoran Milanović made a claim when he spoke to the press on the Croatian island of Vis in which he referred to the massacre in Srebrenica, also known as the Srebrenica genocide: „Srebrenica is not the same as the Holocaust, it is not the same as Jasenovac.…
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…
With less than 40% of the population having been administered two doses, Moldova lags behind EU countries in the area of vaccination against covid19; an important concern for its national law-making authorities. After loosing its parliamentary majority in July 2021, the Moldovan Socialist Party claimed that the new government’s measures led to a near 60%…
On September 1, 2021, “Deutsche Welle” published an article titled “How much do school teachers earn in Germany and can they be granted gifts?” Its author, Xenia Safronova, a journalist, claims that German teachers are paid 3 to 5 thousand euro per month on average, and this meets the benchmark of «higher than average» in…
According to the Spain’s Supreme Court decree of 14 October, 2019 12 Catalonian politicians were sentenced to imprisonment and fines for initiating the anticonstitutional referendum on independence of Catalonia from Spain, which was held on the 1st of October, 2017.
When you live in a democratic country, there’s no reason to deny that politicians have a very big influence on the people. It’s their job to make us feel safe, guarded, keep the economy flowing, provide enough jobs and make sure the country works the way it’s supposed to work. Still we don’t always see…
The Association Agreement between the EU and Georgia is a framework for cooperation proposed by the EU to non-EU member states. The agreement advocates for the creation of European standards and includes a range of different areas for cooperation such as free trade, implementation of EU legal practices, visa free movement, consumer protection and reforms…
51.9% of voting citizens supported Brexit at a referendum on June 23, 2016. 3 years after the process has not been finished yet. There is information every week in British media that Brexit has been postponed. The parties cannot develop a mutually acceptable agreement that will neutralize any drawbacks of Brexit.
In Georgia, European Parliament election 2019 has been covered in traditional media outlets, and in online and social media as well. Traditional media outlets mostly focused on the actual election days, while the election campaigns got less attention. The same approach was applied in part of online/social media too. We monitored major TV stations and…
Most students, deeply entrenched in data research, have ‘grabbed’ for pizzas, at some time or another. So have I. Over the past three years I’ve been on the other end of the table, coaching young fact-checkers on their journeys to yet another election. Helping them to find their way in heaps of data, supporting them…
The Netherlands were one of the first to vote in the European parliamentary elections, on Thursday 23 May. The weeks ahead of the voting day are always filled with political statements and confused voters: who do you vote for and where do you vote? After all it is an ordinary working day and some people…
Leader of the political party Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), Isa Mustafa, tweeted on the 17th of June 2017 that his Kosovan party is a member of the European People’s Party, the largest political group in the European Parliament.
On 7 March 2019 the Dutch website RTL News published an article titled: “Sustainable thinker often the worst polluter”. The article claimed that several connections could be made between sustainable thinking and polluting behaviour. In other words: those who claimed to worry about the environment were often the ones who polluted more.
The world community is concerned about possible interference in election process. The expected threat comes from definite counties, but is there another stakeholder, interested in elections outcome as well as governments, and similarly powerful?
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
